put down your sword and crown
by but seriously
Summary: The Originals have thirty days left to live, and all Rebekah wants to do is learn how to drive. Stefan, Kol, Klaus and Caroline come along for the ride. klaus/caroline, stefan/rebekah, elena/elijah & ensemble cast
1. got balls of steel, got an automobile

**Hi. So I haven't written anything in two years... bear with me? :) also: It's my first venture into tvd, concrit would be very much appreciated.**

—

**put down your sword and crown**

.

..

**i  
><strong>got balls of steel, got an automobile  
>for a minimum wage<p>

—

Stefan's teaching me how to drive, Rebekah says.

She's not familiar with any of the modern day cars yet, seeing as she's been daggered since the 20's, and _whose fault was that?_ Klaus looks back blankly, because it really isn't his problem if she wants to drive. It's _especially_ not his problem if the person she wants to learn how to drive from is Stefan Salvatore. It isn't until she brings up Kol that Klaus begrudgingly relinquishes his rare, Model X Duesenberg to her after she begs and wheedles one day, with only a slight smirk on her face.

"You'd do well to understand the brevity of this situation," he says gravely. "The condition you see her in now is how I want to see her when you're done."

She merely smiles in return and cheerfully jingles the keys, and Klaus decides he doesn't trust her enough with his baby.

Sighing, he snaps his sketchbook shut. And that is how he ends up glowering in the backseat of his vintage car while Rebekah insists on bumping into every curb she encounters, Stefan rubbing his eyes wearily beside her.

If Stefan's uncomfortable being cooped up in the box of a car with two increasingly grumpy Originals, he doesn't show it. The only time he's showing signs of wear and tear is when they spot Caroline walking down the sidewalk to her own non-self-destructing car.

"Caroline!" he calls, and she blinks in surprise, just a little confused.

"Stefan?"

He leans out of the window, hair barely peeking through. "Get in."

"Um." She pauses in mock thought. "No?" Who can blame her reluctance, really? Rebekah's in the front seat, gripping the steering wheel the way one would grip the ledge of a building should they accidentally fall from a window; Stefan's hair is sticking at odd angles and he's got his crazy eyes going on, and Klaus is spouting out death threats 80 miles an hour should Rebekah get a _millimeter _of a scratch on his car.

He leans out further, and his voice drops a notch. "Please. I'm losing my mind and need a friendly face. Please, Caroline." He's this close to clasping her hands, but the window's too cramped for that. "_Please_. For my _sanity._"

"You're on your own, pardner," she giggles at her attempt of talking cowboy.

"Get in the damn car, Caroline." Stefan's jaw is set. "Or I'll tell Damon what I found the last time I was at y—"

She drops her shopping bags on the sidewalk and roughly yanks the door open (Klaus winces) and shoots inside. "I'm in, I'm in!"

(Stefan looks satisfied, Rebekah glares, Caroline looks resigned and Klaus is trying hard not to smile as Caroline's knee threatens to brush against his.)

—

Step on the clutch, Rebekah, Stefan says.

Remember the hand-brakes, Rebekah, he says.

_Watch out for that kid, Rebekah!_ he yells when she accidentally careens into a park.

Check the side-mirror every so often, Rebekah, he says.

No, not to see if your lipstick's still in place, Rebekah, he says.

Stefan's starting to grow weary after only an hour – and he's starting to regret asking Caroline to come along since she's no help at all: all she does is roll her eyes and tut (loudly) when Rebekah manages to stall the car or stop dead in the middle of a long procession of cars, or demand (loudly) that Klaus keeps his hands off of her, or squeals (loudly) at every ice-cream parlour they pass by.

Later, when Klaus and Caroline are reclining on a blanket on some tufts of grass (they had reached their limit when they had slammed into the side of the car enough times to ensure the door wouldn't work anymore) and Rebekah's gotten used to making U-turns without taking down a tree, Stefan asks why she can't just use one of Kol's many shiny new cars — he'd taken a liking to sleek black cars after Damon lends the Originals his Dark Knight DVDs — instead of Klaus's sardine can of a car. There's no doubt that Klaus truly did love the car; its paint job was magnificent and there was not a rust or creak in sight when he lifted the hood out of curiosity. But really, nothing could compare to Kol's SLR McLaren Mercedes, which could probably run at vampire speed if forced.

"It reminds me of old times," Rebekah shrugs, glancing at the overhead mirror to admire her eyebrows, and not the road behind them as Stefan had "politely" suggested she do. "The last time Nik and you shared genuine laughter. Better times. A time where my life _wasn't _being plagued by absolutely nocuous brunette wenches."

"A lot of vulgarity for one sentence, don't you think?" Stefan says mildly, but lets it slide. The car jerks, and Stefan grips her wrist, his teeth gritting together. "Raise the clutch _slowly_, Rebekah." He pinches the bridge of his nose. "Honestly, sometimes I think you forget on purpose."

Rebekah determinedly looks ahead of her, and doesn't hit a single curb for the next half an hour, the amount of time it took for her cheeks to return to its normal color.

—

This doesn't make any sense, Caroline says.

Because really, she can't take it any longer. "Why are you doing this?"

"Doing what, love?" Klaus murmurs, not looking up from his sketchbook. His casual lounged position on the blanket irks her, and his non-attempts of trying to touch her after she had shot off on him are also irking her. Because seriously, if he isn't annoying her then what else is she supposed to do while waiting out Rebekah joyriding.

"Letting Stefan teach Rebekah how to drive."

Klaus raises his eyes to hers and sends her a pointed look as the air is pierced with Rebekah's screams and Stefan's rare curses as they almost land in a ditch. "That's why."

Caroline rolls her eyes and props herself up on her elbows. "No, I meant – why are you letting _Stefan_ teach Rebekah how to drive? Aren't you worried he's going to dagger her or something?"

Klaus chuckles. "Sweetheart, there was once a time where Stefan was my best friend. Despite what he is now, I'd further trust him to dagger Rebekah just as I trust your precious Tyler ever making it back to Mystic Falls."

Her eyes flash, but just as she's about to retort, Klaus growls, "And I will let Rebekah do anything she wants. If she wants to spend the last thirty days of her life learning how to drive from a newly-martyred Ripper, so be it."

Caroline tries not to feel guilty by focusing on a patch of daisies, and thinking of Tyler's abs.

It doesn't work.

—

The spell didn't work the way it should have, Bonnie says.

"The way it should have?" Damon raises an eyebrow and waves his drink in her direction. "Explain."

Bonnie's eyebrows furrow and she taps her nails against the table. Elena is keeping a firm distance from her – as she should, since her mother is still in transition – all the way across the sitting room. Stefan's leaning against the bookshelf, hands in his pockets and eyes on the floor.

"Since you tur—since the spell was interrupted—" Bonnie has to swallow before continuing. "Esther didn't have time to channel enough power to kill them immediately." She eyes each one of them, but they all stare blankly back at her, eyebrows furrowed.

It's Caroline who gets it. "How long?" she asks softly.

Bonnie purses her lips together, a hint of triumph in her voice. "The next full moon."

—

I'm really sorry you have to go through this again, Elena says.

Elena is put to the task of telling Elijah – after all, it's the least she could do after lying to him before — and he takes it surprisingly well. No kidnappings or veiled threats follow, and he even offers her some mint tea.

She sniffs at it suspiciously, then turns to him. "You were willing to kill me to save your lives before." She presses her lips together, wondering if it'd be too soon to say, but nothing – not even bad etiquette – was going to save them from their fate anyway. "What changed?"

He shrugs and sips, ignoring how scalding it is. "Perhaps Esther was right."

(Elena ignores how he no longer calls Esther _mother_.)

"Finn was miserable; Kol's constantly looking for entertainment. And Klaus… just kills and kills and kills." He sighs. "Maybe it is our time." He looks at her over the rim of his teacup. She almost wants to laugh at the sight: Elijah in his omnipresent suit, sitting on a dainty chair and sipping from a dainty teacup that she bets Rebekah had chosen herself — but doesn't. She feels nothing but remorse, and surprisingly, pain. There isn't much cause to laugh.

"A thousand years is a long time," he says, and his tone is almost gentle. Enough to make blink owlishly at him, stunned. Enough to make her have to lower her teacup before the contents spilled over.

Elijah surprises her once again by taking her hand when it starts to shake. It should be the other way around, she wants to say.

He should be crying into his cup of mint tea, not her, she wants to say.

He should be the one in her arms, _not her_, she wants to say.

Instead, she sniffs and rests her head against Elijah's shoulder. She decides that there isn't much cause to talk right now.

—

I refuse to let you lot have fun without me, Kol says.

He tags along on Rebekah's next drive out. Every time Caroline shifts in her seat (because despite everything she's Googled about Klaus's car and all the ravings about plush leather upholstery, it isn't enough to provide a comfortable position when squeezed between Klaus and his mysterious sketchbook and Kol and his smug glances).

There's only so much ground to cover in Mystic Falls, and Caroline soon finds that Rebekah's leading them out of town, past the _Welcome to Mystic Falls! Population: 515_ sign and soon sees rolling green hills and brilliant blue skies all around. Rebekah's laughing into the wind (she wanted the top rolled down, Klaus had grouchily agreed), Kol's lips are playing at a hint of a smile, Klaus actually looks up from his sketchbook to shoot Caroline an appreciative glance, and Stefan actually looks like he's enjoying himself.

That is, until Rebekah takes a wrong turning and they find themselves rumbling down a dirt road with grooves of hard mud and tree roots poking out.

"Maybe—maybe we should turn around?" Caroline calls out after a bump leaves them bouncing in the backseat.

"Forget that, maybe we should _stop?"_ Klaus snarls as a branch scratches the side of the car.

"I don't know how!" Rebekah has a death grip on the steering wheel. _"I don't know how!"_

"What, how to turn around or stop?" Kol glares into the overhead mirror.

"Both!"

"Of course!" Kol's hands are thrown into the air from exasperation, and not because Rebekah had attempted to stop the car from turning the steering wheel sharply. Stefan's trying to steady her, but a branch thwacks him in the face. He shifts and the whole car shifts with him, and they start to crash into a ditch, only it _wasn't a ditch, it was a fucking ravine,_ and Caroline's hands fly out to grip the seat in front of her – instead she manages to catch Klaus's shoulder as he slams painfully against her own—

Kol's yelling something like, "A fat lot of good these driving lessons are!" while trying to grip the seats in front of him—

"Don't press the throt—use the handbrakes, Rebekah!"

"I don't know how!"

"It's the one by your hand—yeah, let it coast—yeah, _pull it, Rebekah!"_

Rebekah tugs and it wrenches off from the floor with a clang—

Klaus gives a strangled cry—

"No—no, don't pani—" Stefan's head hits the windshield. "Press down on the clutch and break!"

"I don't know h—_I don't know how!"_

Klaus is torn between holding on to the door, which keeps banging open, or his sketchbook—

Kol is growling out every curse word under the sun—

Caroline keeps screaming _We're going to die we're going to die we're going to die! _and Rebekah is screaming back _We're already dead you daft dimbo—_

Stefan keeps yelling _THE BRAKES. THE BRAKES, REBEKAH. ON THE RIGHT. STEP ON THE BRAKES ON THE RIGHT._

The car keeps rolling down and they can't see anything in the pitch blackness, and there's a loud crash and all at once everyone's mingled screams die down, because the car isn't crashing through the thicket anymore. The moon peeks through the clouds, clear and bright, enough to show that Klaus's eyes are screwed shut in pain.

—

He's fine; Elijah's fine, Elena says.

"I heard a crash, didn't sound fine to me," Damon huffs, crossing his arms. "What happened?"

Elijah's lip curled in mild disgust. "There was some dried vervain behind these books." He gestures to where Stefan usually keeps the books on their family history. Not that there had been much to record. For the last 146 years it had just been him and Damon, after all.

"Well, somebody's got to keep your paws off his journals." Damon spares him a smile as Elijah wrings his hands, getting rid of the bumps that had formed on his skin. Elena picks up the picture frame that had fallen off the mantelpiece when Elijah had withdrew his hand in a hurry.

Her hair is rumpled and there are dark circles under her eyes, from thinking things that are way beyond her capacity to control. Bonnie still avoids her like the plague, claiming indifference when Elena asks her what's wrong. Damon knocks on her door at night, asking if she's alright. She's taken to sleeping at the Salvatore's for the past few nights because the house is eerily silent with Jeremy gone and Alaric at the hospital. Elijah comes and goes, and Damon bites his tongue from remarking anything because he may be an asshole, but he's a _kind_ asshole and thought that maybe Elijah would appreciate his remaining days on earth hanging out with his human bestie.

That's not to say he hasn't been curious about the muffled conversations he hears in passing as he ventures from room to room, whiskey in hand, unable to sleep himself. The whispers usually start around 11 (after Elijah comes in at around 10:45, always armed with a box of macaroons and a tight smile for Damon), he'd hear maybe a raised voice or two, and sometimes laughter. This draws out until the crickets stop chirping around 4am. That's when he'd usually hear Elijah leaving.

He'd usually stand in her doorway after knocking, _Are you alright?_

She'd give him a smile that eerily mirrors Elijah's.

He'll let himself feel an inch of relief before gesturing, Can_ I…?_

She looks at him, really looks at him, and slowly shakes her head.

Damon nods curtly and turns around, closing the door soundlessly behind him.

—

You need to get over it, Caroline says.

She rolls her eyes and turns over, lounging on the cool grass next to Klaus, who has his arm over his eyes. (They didn't bother with the blanket this time as Kol was too busy tormenting Rebekah with it by whipping across the street at vamp speed and covering up the windshield when he decided the night needed to be pierced by her shrieks).

"Caroline," Klaus groans. "Dear sweet naïve Caroline. You don't understand. That was a very rare automobile. It was a _Model X Duesenberg._" He lets this hang in the air, and Caroline looks up from her nails and squints, trying to come up with an eloquent response.

"So?"

"_So?_" Klaus sputters, sitting up. "Only five were made. I don't care much about automobiles, but let me assure you that Ole Betsey—" (he says it with a curl of his lip) "—means more to me than Kol's left arm."

Rebekah had christened Klaus's Model X Duesenwhatsis Ole Betsey 'cause it sure as hell made a sound like one when she slammed down on the clutch with unnecessary force. Caroline spared a glance at the street, where Kol's figure looked warped in the moonlight. He was now darting past the car and pretending to be a dead body, every now and then declaring "My strumpet of a sister _does_ know more about automobiles than just the backseat!"

Needless to say, Rebekah had not been pleased. She then made it her life mission to run Kol down, much to Stefan's chagrin. He was still giving half-hearted advice though, like "Change gears to go faster", or "Remember the _brakes_, Rebekah" or "Feign a right, Kol won't know what hit him".

"It's a 90-year-old car," Caroline points out. One of the side-mirrors was dangling uselessly, there was a deep gash in the leather interior of the backseat, the top had been ripped off completely and a tree branch had scratched a great big _haha fuck you I ruined your car_ -type scratch across its body. "It's done it's time."

There's a silence as she realizes what she's said. In the moonlight, Klaus turns to look at her, but doesn't say anything. His eyes roam over every part of her — her face, the way her hair curled like her downwards smile, her porcelain hands that looked fragile when wrapped in his callous hands and—

Wait, when had he reached out and touched her?

Klaus draws back, and Caroline feels a hint of - something.

"Is that what you think of us?" he finally asks. "Is that what you think of me?"

She wonders how she should answer such a question, briefly contemplates brushing it off, but in the gravity of the situation (if you could ignore Kol hollering "_Watch the backseat, Bekah! It's the ghost of shags past!"_) she says in complete honesty, "I think you're an enigma, wrapped in a moron, shrouded with pretension."

He shakes his head, chuckling. Caroline leans forward to play with a tuft of grass. "I also think… that a thousand years is a really long time." She looks at him with a small smile on her face. She doesn't really know what to expect from him, but thought he'd appreciate her honesty, since he'd always liked that. He'd at least smile for that, right?

(Wait, when did she start caring about his smiles?)

But Klaus isn't smiling when he leans back again, his eyes running over her face intently. "Not long enough."

—

**tbc**


	2. one million invisible lines

**a/n: **so i kind of love all of you for reviewing the last chapter. i even love the lurkers! (_especially_ the lurkers…) i also want to thank you guys for the feedback I got for my new oneshot, confetti for everyone!

anyway, in my headcanon kol gets daggered around the same time as rebekah, because i honestly don't know how klaus and rebekah survived the centuries without him. this chapter's not my best, i'm sorry - still a little rusty. (and i overuse parentheses, help.)

buuuut reviewers get the supernatural being of their choice shipped to your front door! (results may vary though.)

—

**put down your sword and crown**

.

**ii**  
>you and me, we're just fine,<br>one million invisible lines**  
><strong>

—

It starts with a polite suggestion.

("I want a bloody turn.")

Of course, when it comes to Kol nothing is polite. He prods the back of Rebekah's head with a stick he finds poking out of the leather seats when he wants her to go faster; when Rebekah ignores his questions on when he gets to drive instead, he compels about three girls back to back to get into the car with them (and they somehow inconveniently scratch themselves bloody) and Caroline has to find a way to get the girls safely out of the car before the veins around Klaus and Stefan's eyes gets more creepy-noticeable.

When Kol feels that Klaus isn't paying nearly enough attention to him, he slings his arm around Caroline (Caroline, eyes wide, would swat his arm away but always a beat too late—Klaus narrows his eyes at this) and twirls a finger around her golden hair, remarking, "They're right about you, you _are_ stunning", always with an eyebrow wiggle in Klaus's direction.

(Caroline doesn't dare ask who _they_ are, just as Klaus doesn't roll his eyes when Kol regales them – _again_ – with tales of how Klaus would dotingly tend to his tiny daisy patch because he likes sketching them.)

"Oh, _piss off_, Kol," Rebekah snaps when Kol prods her with the stick once again. "And stop being such a backseat driver; I know how the door locks work!"

"Really now?" Kol leans forward so his breath is hot against her ear, a devilish grin forming on his face. "I seem to remember a car parked outside the speakeasy on 23rd Street, and a barman named Lesley Parker…"

Rebekah ends up in the backseat, snarling at the back of Kol's head when he intentionally shifts the car so Caroline and Klaus lean heavily against her. Thankfully, Klaus is sitting between them (Wait, why is she _thankful?_ Klaus is arguably worse than Rebekah) and Stefan doesn't comment when Caroline finds her hand gripping Klaus's shoulder more and more. He more or less just does that eyebrow thing of his, _If you must, you must _and Caroline tries to ignore what it means. She wants to give an offhand comment, but Stefan's already turned to Kol: "We drive on the right side of the road here. I'm pretty sure you know that."

"Pretty sure I don't care," Kol lilts, and he guns it down the road, Ole Betsey groaning the whole way.

When Klaus slams painfully into Rebekah's hip the fourth time, she shoots out a hand to twist Kol's ear ("That _hurt_, you slag," he snips) and hisses, "I swear, do that again and I will end your life _very soon_."

Stefan clenches his jaw, Klaus's drawing hand stills, and Caroline looks out the window.

—

There's a knock on the door and Elijah swings it open to a surprise in the form of a petite brunette in a periwinkle sweater.

("Elena? What are you doing here?")

His mouth is quirked into a small smile and he steps aside to let her in. She shrugs off her coat and Elijah takes it, tucking it into a nondescript closet. "I thought I wasn't seeing you until much later."

"I needed a change of scene," Elena admits, walking to the center of the foyer, eyes reflecting the crystal facets of the chandelier hanging from the ceiling. "All Damon wanted to do was drink, or try to find a way to read Stefan's journals…" Her voice trails off, eyes still glued to the pièce de résistance of the room and she wonders, for a brief second, if Klaus is feeling bitter the hours he had put into building their home, wonders if he (like her) feels like it's hopeless. Like it's all for nothing.

She turns back to Elijah, and tries to channel some Caroline sunshine into her smile.

(It feels more like winter morning, but Elena doesn't think about that either.)

"Where's Klaus?"

Elijah takes one hand out of his pocket and gives a non-committal wave. "He's off somewhere with Rebekah and Kol." Guiding her to the sitting room, he places a light hand on the curve of her back, never daring to go any lower. "Truthfully, I haven't seen him since yesterday morning. Rebekah seems to be having fun at least," he adds as an afterthought.

Elena keeps her smile on her face. She knows Elijah hadn't meant to bruise, _Glad she's having the time of her shortly-cut life._ She watches the fond smile playing on his face and twiddles her thumbs together. "What've… you been doing lately?" she asks, after running her eyes over the gilded French furniture of the room.

"You don't have to tread lightly around me, Elena." He nudges the crystal Baccarat bowl filled with her favorite macaroons. "We both know my fate is inescapable. I'd appreciate it if you didn't treat me like I'm made of porcelain."

("We both know you're the fragile one around here," he doesn't say.)

Elena's mouth drops open to stutter a response. "No – that wasn't how—I was just…" She screws her eyes shut, palms coming together in her lap. "Sorry. I actually came today to see if you wanted to do something."

Elijah quirks an eyebrow. "Do something?"

Biting into a pistachio macaroon, Elena nods eagerly. "Anything."

—

Kol decides he's had enough of tormenting Rebekah _in_ the car.

("You can take over this old farce; you're a better match for it anyway.")

Stefan chuckles when Rebekah chucks the now-useless side mirror at Kol's head (Klaus storms out of the car then, Caroline dragging herself after him to make sure he doesn't snap the necks of any innocent bystanders).

"Who's this Lesley Parker he keeps mentioning?" Stefan asks, shaking his head.

Before Rebekah can come up with something, Kol calls out: "Her – what do you call it nowadays? Ah yes, her _booty call_ back in the day!"

"I can explain," Rebekah starts, but gets distracted by the upward curve of Stefan's mouth. A grin forming on her own lips, she says, "I haven't heard you laugh in a long time."

The sounds dies down in Stefan's throat and for a second, he looks trapped, and his eyes dart to the road ahead of them where Kol is easily outrunning the 50 miles per hour pace that Klaus is now limiting her to. He clears his throat and says, "Eyes on the road, Rebekah."

Rebekah bites the insides of her cheek and goes back to trying to run Kol over. Stefan finds that when Rebekah has a goal set, she hits a lot less curbs and actually stays in the middle of the road (assuming Kol keeps running in a straight line, of course). "Of course, Stefan," she mutters, rolling her eyes. Her fingers – clad in tasteful leather gloves – wrap firmly around the steering wheel. She remembers to step down on the clutch before making a turn and Stefan sends her an approving nod.

(She tries not to look too pleased and instead fiddles with her scarf.)

There's a loud clang as the bumper scrapes the road (Rebekah counts her lucky stars that Klaus isn't in the car anymore) when Kol jumps into the backseat, grinning. "You know, sister," Kol begins conversationally, running a hand through his windswept hair, "with the amount of times I catch you making eyes at Stefan here, I'm not surprised you've run over every squirrel in this pony town."

Rebekah responds by making a sharp turn, and Kol hastens to steady himself. "Piss off, Kol," she says automatically, noticing Stefan staring out towards the tree line. "Why don't you go make daisy chains with Klaus or something, God knows what they're doing by that stupid stream."

"Avoiding a snapped neck, no doubt," Kol says and darts out of the car before Rebekah can find a stinging retort.

Stefan cracks a small grin at Rebekah's pout. "You're not that bad." At Rebekah's disbelieving sniff, he insists, "You're getting better."

"So are you," she says quietly before she can quite stop herself.

There's a silence, but she thinks she can hear him whisper a thank you before telling her in his steady voice once again, "Watch out for that squirrel, Rebekah."

—

Caroline dips her feet into the icy stream, toes painted the colors of the edge of the world.

("What do you keep drawing in there?" she finally asks, tired of the sound of pencil against paper.)

Klaus raises an eyebrow. "If I told you, I'd have to kill you." There isn't the slightest bit of a joke in his voice.

"Ooh, ominous." She tilts her head to the side. "Am I in it?"

"I thought you wanted my romantic drawings—" Klaus sneers slightly, "—to leave you alone?"

"So you admit they were romantic?" She shoots, water splashing around her.

"Just as soon as you admit you liked them," Klaus quips right back.

Caroline's perfected her scoff by now and looks away. She doesn't know why she's bringing it up now, doesn't know why she should even care. (Doesn't know why she's been running her fingers over the softening edges of the drawing lately, right as she falls asleep.)

They sit like that for a while, Caroline counting the silver fishes that rush around rocks and occasionally trying to sneak glances at Klaus's sketchbooks – and Klaus, steadily hunched over aforementioned book, not breathing a word.

Later, when she's tired of being ignored, she starts to head back through the trees back to the open road.

(They've been gone awhile anyway, and she doesn't want Stefan to think she's been murdered in the woods by the sociopathic killer they've all deemed Klaus.)

"They're not romantic, by the way," Klaus finally calls out.

Caroline turns around and slips a little over a tree root. Steadying herself, she frowns and calls back, "What?"

"They're just pictures." Klaus is looking directly at her, brushing himself off and flipping his sketchbook shut. "Just pictures of you."

—

They end up having dinner at Maison de Mort, as Damon has taken to calling the Mikaelson Mansion.

(As in, "I saw you picking Rebekah up from the House of Doom and Gloom this morning."

"Been stalking me, I see," Stefan remarks. He licks his thumb and flicks to a fresh page of his journal and frowns at the dog-ears that he can't remember being there before. "Have you been reading this again?"

Damon ignores Stefan's question and insists, "No, really. You must be hijacking our mail again, because I seem to have missed the memo that says we're allowed to walk on the lawns of Maison de Mort _and_ not be staked. In the face."

"Since when do you speak French?" Stefan asks absently, jotting down the day's date with his fountain pen.

Damon shrugs. "You guys are never here anymore; I toured France with the Google Maps dude today.")

So when they all trudge, hop or squeeze their way out the window of Ole Betsey – the doors don't open anymore after Kol 'thoughtfully' duct tapes them shut after they keep creaking open – and see Damon resting on the Originals' front porch, the only person who isn't surprised (Caroline), intrigued (Rebekah), indifferent (Kol), or suspicious (Klaus), is Stefan.

"What are _you_ doing here?" Caroline asks, and subconsciously finds herself standing in between the two brothers. The older Salvatore didn't seem to see her.

"No way," Damon says flatly. "This is _not_ how you've been spending the last three days, brother." He stands, and he skims over the five of them incredulously. "I mean, _Caroline_ I get, since she has all those I'm-a-girl scout-save-all-the-wounded-puppies tendencies but… _you_?"

(Caroline curls her upper lip and reveals a fang; Klaus looks mildly impressed.)

"Damon," Stefan says calmly, but his feet are shuffling closer and his shoulders hunch just a tad. "I can explain."

Klaus picks an imaginary lint off his sweater and leans against Ole Betsey. "Before you tear out Esther's begonias, you might want to hear your brother out, Damon." He smiles, revealing his teeth. "It's an interesting story."

"What, that he's been playing Driving Miss Daisy _without_ compulsion?" Damon scoffs. "Cool story, bro. Does Elena know?"

"Of course, because it would matter _so_ much to her." Rebekah says scornfully, bringing her fist down on Klaus's car. (It dents.) "Better alert the media, we need full coverage for when Elena hears about this!"

"Hears about what?" Elena's suddenly standing in the open door, mouth twisted into a charming little _o_.

Damon and Stefan zero in on Elijah's hand resting lightly on her waist.

Maybe it was the way Elena's lip quivers when she tries to smile, or the way Klaus's stance is mirroring Stefan's – like they're both prepared to lunge for Damon should he say the wrong thing – or how Kol looks like his birthday came earl, that Damon decides to let this temporary insanity slide – _for now._

"You're here too?" he asks weakly instead.

"We've been making fudge brownies," Elena says, looking pleased. It's then that they notice the smudges of flour on the tip of her nose and her sweater.

"_We_?" Kol questions, fusing her eyebrows together.

"Yes, Elena and I," Elijah says, stepping outside to join them on the porch. "They're fudgelicious."

He says it with a straight face. They all stare.

"It's the charming print on the packaging of the instant brownies Elena seems to love," Elijah says to fill the awkward pause, a smile on his face. "We've gone through four of them; the last batch is still in the oven."

"For the love of God," Damon says in one long exhale.

—

They're looking out the window, the two Originals silhouetted magnificently against the setting sun.

(Klaus explains the little predicament they're in and Elijah laughs, asking if Rebekah's run over any humans yet.)

They're sipping blood from their crystal glasses when Klaus says, "I haven't seen her look this content since before…"

"Since before Henrik died," Elijah supplies.

Klaus looks at him strangely, the thought occurring to him as well. "You remember."

"Of course," Elijah says simply.

Rebekah's wiping down Ole Betsey – on Klaus's commands despite Kol commenting that there was nothing much left of her to wipe down – and her face was free from the scowl it held earlier as her body was enveloped in the orange haze. Fireflies flit around her and the cool air lends a lovely shade of pink to her cheeks, and Klaus years to capture her in that moment with his paints.

Elijah lets out a breath, his face clouding over. "Have you told her?"

_That we're going to die? _"No."

Elijah waits for him to add, _not yet_, but it doesn't come. All the way across the house, their sharp ears pick up Damon asking Caroline to pass the salt —

("Your plate already looks like Siberia," Caroline chides. "Your tongue's going to burn right off."

"And miss out on all this _riveting_ conversation?" Damon asks wonderingly. "I guess I'll have to take that risk.")

— and Elena laughing as she piles more brownies on everyone's plates.

Elijah looks weary all of a sudden. "And Kol?"

Side-eyeing his brother, Klaus swigs his drink. "I thought we'd do it together."

Elijah drains his scotch. "Shall we?"

In the garden, they see Kol join Rebekah. She whips the rag at his face, he dodges and tries to upend the soapy water all over her while she runs circles around him, pinching him every so often. Finally they end up rolling and fisting and punching each other in the grass, the sound of their laughter mingles with the low whoops of the evening birds.

Klaus places a hand on Elijah's shoulder just as Kol and Rebekah look up to catch their older brothers' eyes, and they're grinning. Not their usual smiles laced with malice, but the smiles they use to give each other when Henrik was alive, when the most Esther could do to hurt them was forget to pick out their favorite pomegranate seeds.

"Not tonight." Elijah can't be sure, but he thinks he detects the ghost of a plea in Klaus's voice.

"No, not tonight," he agrees. He hesitates before saying, "You're a good man, Klaus."

"You're a good brother," Klaus says hoarsely.

Klaus clasps Elijah's shoulder tighter, nails digging into the fabric of his suit. Elijah looks at him and raises his glass slightly, _I'm not going anywhere. _Eventually, Klaus's hand falls back to his side.

The two of them stand in companionable silence, watching Kol and Rebekah gather their bearings and finish washing the car until the darkness sets in and the only thing left to see are the sporadic blinking of the fireflies.

—

**tbc**


	3. i can bend and not break

**a/n: **i feel like i'm letting you guys down with the quality of these updates… sigh. in any case, please review/give concrit/tell me what you think : )  
>as always, thank you for your reviews on the last chapter!<p>

—

**put down your sword and crown**

.

**iii  
><strong>i am feeling agile,  
>i can bend and not break<p>

—

Monday comes.

Caroline wakes up to rain pounding down on her window and a chill in the air. She showers languorously, drinks her breakfast distractedly, shifts from foot to foot in the hallways, eyes glued to the clock and hands wrapped uncertainly around the strap of her schoolbag.

The seconds tick away and suddenly it's 7:31. She knows she needs to make a move on, but she glances at her BlackBerry one more time anyway – no messages, no missed calls.

She scrolls through her inbox (maybe she'd accidentally clicked on it without noticing…?) and finds nothing but dissipating hope and a heavy feeling in her stomach. The only "we're coming in 10, bring coffee" message that Stefan's sent is from yesterday and the day before that.

Biting her lip, she glances at the clock again (7:42) and sighs, slipping her bag onto her shoulder and locking the door behind her. She lingers on her porch, waiting for her phone to beep, but it never does.

—

Monday goes.

Caroline closes her eyes, wondering if Rebekah's figured out how to put Ole Betsey in reverse yet, if Stefan's drawing up a _another _map of Mystic Falls and the things that can be crashed into, the people too important to even consider passing by, and the people he doesn't mind if she hit (Damon), if Bonnie's wondering why they've all been MIA lately, if Kol is still sore from letting Rebekah run him over, if Klaus has watered his daisies yet. Wondering if he's able to sleep the way she can't. Wondering if he's still bent over his book, drawing.

She falls into a fitful sleep, her hand wrapped around Klaus's picture, warm under her pillow the whole night.

—

Tuesday comes.

Caroline finds Stefan at the field during lunch break, just sitting at the bleachers, staring out at the remnant of last week's football match. He doesn't have his serious vampire face on like she thought he would, not even his worried vampire look (which she hasn't caught a glimpse of since before Klaus came along… but still). He's just staring.

She calls out his name but he doesn't hear. After a while, she shrugs her coat on tighter and treks up to where he's slouched, the hem of her sunshine-yellow dress just flitting about to be seen under the grey material of her coat. He doesn't look up when she goes right up to him, just hunches his shoulders further.

She considers feeling offended.

Instead, she drops her bag down onto the bleacher and slips beside it, her elbows lightly touching the tips of Stefan's shoes. The breeze picks up and she doesn't have any valid reason to shiver, but she does.

"Is there something you need?" Stefan asks eventually, sparing her a quick glance. (A step up from _What do you want_?, Caroline notes, and surreptitiously taps her knee with a triumphant finger.)

"Just to talk," she says, leaning back casually. "You know, I'd say you were thinking about how it's Tuesday, but that'd be way too obvious."

"Considering the fact that it is, in fact, Tuesday?" Stefan asks, amused. Caroline looks up at him, feels something like awe seep onto her face.

He shifts slightly in his seat and Caroline closes her mouth and looks down at her lap, chuckling slightly, but it's not a happy one.

"What's so funny?"

"Nothing, it's just…" She tilts her head towards the pale sunlight, and Stefan appreciates the tilt of her neck. "Everything's not going like we'd hoped it would."

"Yes it is," Stefan says shortly. "It's going exactly as planned. They're still gonna die."

It's the way he says it, like it's a fact – which it is – that makes her shudder again. "But you didn't exactly plan on getting attached, did you?" she asks, silently daring him to look her in the eyes.

Stefan grunts, "Who said anything about getting attached?" He lets out a gust of breath.

"You didn't have to," Caroline says flatly. "You're having all these doubts all of a sudden and you hate it, don't you? You're wondering if this is how feeling is like, and you're thinking of flipping again." She hoists herself up so she's right next to him. "Aren't you?" Jostling his shoulder, she asks again (a little too forcefully), "_Aren't you_?"

There's nothing but the sound of wind around them. Caroline continues to look at him despairingly and he sighs.

"It doesn't matter." Hanging his head, he counts his fingers, counts them again, clutching and unclutching and repeats the process. "They're down to twenty-six days. We're not their friends; we never were. So it's no use _pretending_ like everything's changed. _No use_, you hear me?" He grabs her shoulder to make her look at him, pushes some sense into her. Caroline looks a little uncertain (he doesn't want to admit that she looks a bit scared) and lets her go, but not without repeating (for good measure): "Absolutely no use." He looks ahead again, jaw set. "Not after everything they've done."

Caroline thins her lips. "Then what the hell are you doing, Stefan?"

"Honestly?"

"Yeah."

"I have no idea. Do _you_ have any clue what the hell I'm doing? What the hell _you're_ doing?" He shrugs his jacket closer to his skin, wishing he could just suffocate from the cold his skin would never feel again.

For once, Caroline doesn't have an answer.

—

Tuesday goes.

—

Caroline wakes up with a vengeance, showering quickly and buttoning up her coat all the way to her neck. She sucks down on her breakfast furiously on the way to the Salvatore's and nearly knocks Damon down the staircase ("Watch it, blondie!") in her plight to find Stefan.

"Good morning!" she all but cheers as she crashes into his bedroom, parting the curtains and throwing the windows open to let in some much-needed light. She decides that the fact that she's in the room is sunshine enough, and surveys Stefan, who's glowering at her from the reflection of his mirror.

"Is there something you need?" he asks ( just like yesterday), doing up the buttons on his shirt.

"Yes," Caroline says firmly. "We're going driving today."

Stefan's hand falters on its way to grab his messenger bag. "We have school."

"And _I_, Student Body President of Mystic Falls High am declaring that school… can wait." She twirls around in the room, looking under books and into drawers until she finds the keys to Stefan's cherry-red convertible and scoops it up into her hands.

Stefan's staring at her suspiciously. "Have you thought about what I said yesterday?"

Huffing, Caroline crosses her arms over her chest. "Yes. Now are you coming or not?"

"I distinctly remember I had to _threaten _you to get into the car."

She points to herself. "I didn't get to be Student Body President by having tunnel-vision like you. I'm… entitled to changing my mind." Rolling her eyes at the incredulous look on Stefan's face, her hands move from her chest to her hip. "Is that a problem?" She hopes her voice is intimidating enough.

"Not at all," Stefan says, smirking (Caroline resents that all-knowing glint in his eyes). He reaches over to snatch back his keys. "But I'm driving."

They plough down the stairs together, two at a time—

"_Hey!" _Damon glares as he's shoved into the banister. At their retreating backs, he calls indignantly: "I know you're miss Goody Two Shoes and Stefan's a reformed badass, but isn't it _too_ early to catch the worm?"

—and all but fling the front door open. The sun peeks out through the white haze of the sky and Stefan leaves his coat unbuttoned.

—

"Klaus." Stefan nods in greeting, shouldering past the hybrid and turning a corner to find Rebekah's room.

"Morning!" Caroline sings, dropping her bag and coat by the door and skipping inside.

Raising an eyebrow, Klaus raises a tired brow and grumbles, "Someone's chipper this morning."

"It's driving day, isn't it?" Caroline quips, poking her head into the closet to drag out Stefan's whiteboard streaked with her pink and purple markers. "Someone has to be, to keep you and Kol from killing each other."

She stiffens the moment the words leave her mouth, but is saved from Klaus's calculating reply when Kol leans down from the banister above them and says, "Are we planning on another day of mischief and mayhem? Painting the town? Spitting right in the face of Mayor Lockwood's meticulously-structured road rules?"

Caroline nods, eyes crinkling up to match her smile. "Yes."

"Well, in that case…" Kol hoists himself over the banister and manages to tumble down the fifteen feet separating him from the floor with grace (Caroline swallows her awe) and sidles up to her, grinning like he knows he's impressed her.

Glaring at the both of them, Klaus turns away to shut the front door. "Aren't you supposed to be in school?" he all but mutters.

"Oh, about that—"

"_And_ breaking school rules as we speak!" Kol slings an arm around Caroline's, who beams. "I have decided that I like you, Caroline Forbes."

Rolling his eyes, Klaus breathes in the sharp smell of 6:51am and goes to pour himself a drink. The two of them fawning and gabbing and arguing over Stefan's Master Plan is giving him a migraine, but before he can lift the amber liquid to his lips Caroline's suddenly by his side, slapping the drink out of his hands. ("It's not even time for breakfast yet!" She looks scandalized.)

The drink hurls into the wall like a bullet and Klaus looks equally as scandalized. "That was Shackleton's hundred year old whiskey!" Caroline finds herself cornered into the bookcase, her wide eyes locked onto Klaus's furious ones. "There were only _three_ bottles discovered under the thick arctic ice and I had to compel my way across Antarctica and break into a vault to get one."

Gulping, Caroline tries to shrug her should but find that Klaus's sinewy arms are trapping them. "Maybe you should start investing in things that _aren't_ indispensible?" Her voice is two octaves higher than it usually is and she hates it.

"That would defeat the purpose of investment, wouldn't it love?" Klaus growls. He's leaning in closer, cold breath ghosting her lips tantalizingly, and finds that she's unable to turn away.

"Oh, lighten up, Nik." Kol rests on the arm of a wingchair, examining the whiskey. "Though your taste for alcohol _is_ commendable, it's nothing to get your unmentionables in a twist over. All good things must come to an end," he finishes airily, taking a swig straight from the bottle.

Klaus is staring at Kol, his face torn between wanting to torture Kol against broken glass for tainting his drink and letting him have his way, under the circumstances. So tortured were his thoughts that he doesn't realize that he still has Caroline pinned to the wall.

(Caroline's all too aware of it, though, and tries not to notice how warm he is on such a cold morning.

She does anyway.)

"Nik," Rebekah admonishes with Stefan in tow (looking prepared to rip Klaus off of Caroline to hurl him out the open window), weaving a lock of her hair into an intricate braid. "What on earth are you doing to that poor girl?"

Klaus takes a step back (it finally occurs to Caroline that she'd stopped breathing some three minutes ago) and grudgingly mutters, "My apologies."

Wrapping a pattered silk scarf around her neck, Rebekah asks brightly if everyone's ready. Stefan takes a step back, marveling at the Monroe-esque air she's exuding (so Caroline's made him watch a few of those movies way back when, it's perfectly acceptable for a man to appreciate those movies these days, alright?). Kol claps his hands once and speeds out the front door yelling "Bags on the front seat!"

"But _I'm_ teaching her how t—" Letting out a groan, Stefan races out after him.

Rebekah smoothes red lipstick over her smile and raises an eyebrow. "Shall we go, or should I give you two a minute?"

Caroline mumbles something incoherent and all but zooms out of the house. Grabbing his jacket, Klaus trudges outside after Rebekah and kicks the door closed.

Rebekah clutches at his arm and trills, "Oh, Stefan's teaching me how to reverse-park today!"

Klaus rubs a hand over his eyes, wishing he were drunk. "I need coffee for this."

—

"Ooh, there's a spot right there!" Caroline presses her faces against the window, tapping the back of Rebekah's seat urgently. "By the fire hydrant!"

"You're not allowed to park th—" Stefan starts to say, but the doomed sound of metal thudding against metal cuts him short.

"Too late." Kol says brightly and stretches out in his seat while Stefan, Caroline and Klaus glower at him enviably, knees knocked together.

Rebekah pushes her sunglasses up and says, "Today isn't going so bad. Parking is easy."

("Yeah, when you park in the _middle_ of the road," Stefan mutters. Klaus slaps him a steely look to silence him.)

"Indeed it is, Bekah." Kol reaches out a hand to kill the engine. "I'm obviously a much better teacher than Stefan here." He scratches the back of his head. "Though why he wants to teach you how to park a car when you don't even know how to _stop_ one escapes me."

"Let's just get our coffee and get a move on," Stefan snaps (before Rebekah can do the same to Kol's neck), kicking the door open. "I'm sick of having to compel people when they ask why we're not in school."

"Oh, let them," Caroline says, carefree (Stefan squints at her, suspicious of anyone _this _happy at obscene hours of the day). "It's not every day we get to drive down the street without taking out half the football team."

"Lovely town, this," Klaus notes sardonically, closing the door gingerly after Caroline, whose uncertain smile grows into a bigger one when she sees him hold the glass doors of the coffee shop for an elderly woman.

Before she can follow after him, Stefan catches her elbow, pulling her back. "Not growing _attached_, are you?"

Caroline glares. "Of course not."

—

In the fairly short time since her undaggering, Rebekah seems to have adapted well to contemporary fashion and casual coffee shops. Running a red-painted finger across the knot of her scarf, she skims down the length of Starbucks's pastry selection while Kol looks around him, frowning.

It's a slow morning, something Caroline is insanely glad of as she makes her way to the counter, because Kol is looking around thirstily – just not for a caffeine fix.

"Good morning," the redhead with the Ally nametag greets with a smile. "What'll it be?"

Tapping her fingers on the counter, Caroline tilts her head before saying, "Venti half white mocha, two shots espresso, blended with ice and two percent milk mocha." She smiles at Kelly and says, "Extra whipped cream, please."

Stefan saunters up beside her and says, "Grande house blend, dark roast. And can I also have—"

But Klaus shoulders him out of the way, drawling, "I'll have the same." He drops his eyes to the barista's neck and a smile twists onto his face – the scary kind. "You have a lovely neck, Kelly."

Kelly's hand flutters upwards, meeting his eyes. "Oh," she breathes. "Thanks." She averts her gaze and arranges the cups in front of her, red-cheeked and openly flustered.

"Oh stop it, Nik." Rolling her eyes, Rebekah leans into the counter and promptly says, "Grande coffee in a Venti cup. Two pumps vanilla, two pumps hazelnut, two pumps caramel. Two equals and four sweet and lows filled to the top with cream, extra cream on the side." As an afterthought, she adds: "And a stirrer."

"What about you, sir?" Kelly prompts Kol.

Tearing his frowning eyes away from the menu, he asks (a little bewilderedly), "I thought we were getting _coffee_?"

—

Wednesday comes.

Elena wakes slowly, clutching her teddy closer to her chest as she breathes in and out, in and out. She can feel pale sunshine on her face and nods approvingly at the weather, eyes still closed. A sharp breeze wafts in the room and she scrunches her nose.

There's something different about the room, like air has been pushed aside to make room, like the sound of two people breathing instead of one. She pulls her head out of her covers and opens her eyes to meet –

Elijah's. He blinks his own chocolate eyes back at her and they warm up the room. He's sitting in her paisley armchair, reading _Animal Farm_ with a bemused expression on his face. Snapping the book shut, he says, "Good morning, Elena."

"Good morning," Elena replies, a little flustered. "What are you…?"

"You overslept—"

"I _what?_" Elena kicks the covers off of her and stumbles (or tries to) out of bed, but Elijah firmly pushes her back against her pillows.

(She gulps.)

"—and school started two hours ago. It's alright, I've compelled your friend Matt to take notes for you—"

"You didn't have to _compel_ him—"

"—and I thought breakfast is in order, so I made blueberry pancakes—"

"Made?"

"—but it appears we're out of coffee and I considered going out to get some but you've woken up—"

"I'll text Damon, but why are you—?"

"—so get dressed," Elijah finishes, oblivious to Elena's splutters. He turns to leave the room, but Elena catches his hand.

"Elijah. Why'd you let me sleep in?"

Looking down at her, he traces a ghost of a touch under her eyes—

(Elena's breath catches in her throat.)

—and churns frenzies into her stomach with his gaze. He finally meets her eyes and says, "You look like you needed it."

"Oh," she says, at a loss for words. "Well… don't do it again; I fully expect to be woken up next time. Not everyone can compel their way to an excellent attendance."

Elijah pauses by the doorway, a strange look crossing his face. "Do you need me to do anything about that?"

"No!" Laughing, Elena jostles him out of her room.

—

"Really, this is too much." Elena pops a blueberry into her mouth and contemplates her morning. "You didn't have to do all of this."

"I wanted to." As usual, he's never eating when she is, listens intently when she talks; studies her face she chews. Sometimes guilt – that Elijah _chooses _to spend time with her after what she's done – thrashes her insides to bits; sometimes his smile – that Elijah _wants _to smile after what she's done – is compensation enough.

Elena pushes her breakfast around on her plate. "Why do you?"

Instantly, she regrets asking. That strange look is flitting across his face again—_stupid stupid stupid, _the man's dying and she's making it about herself; tells him about her parents and Jeremy when they were little on their midnight conversations when she _should_ be talking about him, feeling nothing but uncontained joy when Elijah actually laughs at the things he says, liking his discreet gazes and faltering touches—

"It's strange." Elijah frowns and leans forward (Elena subconsciously moves closer), deep in thought. "It's like a void inside me is being filled when I'm with you—your heart beats while I have none, you breathe deeper when you smile. Being around you has reminded me what it's like to be human."

Elena's eyelashes are fluttering, and her mouth is parting slightly, but Elijah continues: "I feel less of a monster, and more of a man."

"But Elijah—" She makes the space between them disappear by grasping his hands. "You could—could never be a monster: Alaric looks up to you so much and you're the only vampire Damon actually listens to besides Stefan, and you've been so good to me…"

"What you feel and what I feel are two very different things," Elijah says (almost regretfully).

Elena looks at him determinedly, no hint of a smile on her lips. "Well then, we'll have to change that. Because when I'm around you, I feel…" Hands still wrapped around his, she wrenches his tightly wound hands from each other and drags his palm to her chest, directly over her stuttering heart.

Elijah's eyes meet hers.

"This," she finishes, voice like scratched silk. "I feel this."

Elijah raises his free hand from the table, as if to touch her face.

His gaze lingers, as if to pierce her soul.

—

Klaus storms into the Gilbert household, knocking Damon into a potted plant—

("Can we talk about your manhandling of me today?" Damon grouses, shaking dirt off of his jeans. "It is _seriously_ getting old.")

—and slams Kol against the wall. "I've put up with you long enough."

"K-Klaus?" Elena appears, eyes a little dazed. She turns to Caroline, eyes flashing for an explanation. She's the only one who's actually trying to stop the impending brawl (Rebekah just looks exasperated; Stefan bored).

Caroline ducks as a vase goes flying, Kol following shortly. He twists in the air to upright himself before his back hits the wall, but before damage could be dealt on Kol's part, both brothers find themselves hurled in opposite directions as Elijah appears, blood and fire in his eyes.

"What is _wrong_ with the two of you?" Dragging (a snarling) Kol upright with his left hand and (glowering) Klaus in the other, he gives a shove for good measure before ordering: "Explain yourselves."

Klaus says nothing and shoulders Kol on his way to the kitchen. Kol's steeling his shoulders, but one look from Elijah sends him to the kitchen as well. When it's clear no one wants to say anything, Caroline pipes up, "_Someone_ got us kicked out of Starbucks."

("Who gets kicked out of _Starbucks_?" Damon rolls his eyes. "Aren't they licensed to serve unless you happen to be a cruel, volatile undead being?")

Elena's eyes flit between Kol and Klaus. "Can I venture a guess?"

"Sure, want a hint?" Stefan snaps, every second ticking by like a stake pounding against his skull with the lack of caffeine. "Starts with a K and ends with idiot."

Everyone looks at Klaus. He volleys with a scornful look and a sharp fang. "It wasn't me."

"Kol, then," Elijah remarks.

"_Kol_ – the arse that he is – tried to compel the barista into sliding a knife into her arm because _Klaus_ called him a heathen for not knowing what to order," Rebekah yawns, tugging her scarf loose. "Then Stefan broke a table trying to get Kol from jumping Klaus."

"When we got to the boarding house, they were out of coffee," Caroline finishes gloomily.

Damon raises a finger. "That would be my doing." He walks out of the kitchen and reappears a moment later, laden from waist to chin with coffee. "'Lena asked me to bring coffee."

"For _two_," Elena gawks. "Not an entire army."

("Two?" Stefan mouths to Caroline.)

"Hey, you want coffee or not?" Damon tosses the Nescafe at Stefan. "Especially you, brother. You look like Bambi's mom just came back to life only to be shot again."

"I could think of a few people I'd like to shoot," Kol says. "With a White Oak bullet."

"Coffee! Who wants coffee!" Caroline erratically pushes mugs into everyone's hands—

Rebekah grimaces at Jeremy's _Me Gusta!_ mug but takes it without a sound.

—and the dangerously quiet vampires (and hybrid) take a gulp, eyes still set on each other but at least in no position to tear off limbs. Eventually the charged air dissipates and they start talking about other things (Kol still insist on the retelling of Klaus's daisy patch) Caroline eases into a chair, taking refuge in the still of the moment until they hear the front door crack open and an all-too-familiar voice.

"Elena?" There's the sound of a coat rustling open and harried footsteps into the house. "You will _not_ believe what - or _who -_ I just saw earlier, it's the craziest th—"

Bonnie's standing just outside the kitchen, looking in confusion at the intrigued (as in, "my what interesting topics we are discussing" and not "I wonder how many times I have to dagger you until you die") look on Damon's face as he talks to Kol, looking incredulously at how Klaus's hand is just a hair's breadth away from Caroline's, looking shocked at Stefan doing some sort of rooster-choking gesture to Rebekah (it doesn't occur to her that he's teaching her how to properly turn the steering wheel of a car)—but above all, Bonnie's looking furious.

Kol surveys her over the lip of his mug. "You look like you could use some coffee."

—

**tbc**


	4. or i can break and take it with a smile

rebekah/stefan/kol/caroline/klaus will forever be my ot5, but hannah & dj are my **brotp 5ever**.

anyhoo, did anyone else watch that amazing episode of gossip girl yesterday? honestly i haven't been _physically able _to stop smiling since then! i've had 'ceremony' by new order on repeat (1) on itunes for about, idk, four years, give or take? you should give it a listen, it's awesomesauce :D

—

**put down your sword and crown**

.

..

**iv  
><strong>or i can break and take it with a smile

—

"If you lot don't _shut up_ I will hurl this car off a cliff," Klaus snarls, a deep frown etched on his face.

Stefan's decided that Rebekah's finally ready to face the treacherous traffic of the highways, and Klaus doesn't want to put a damper on their little excursions—as he's taken to calling them; Damon's much ruder about it—or anything of the like (especially as any wrong move might result in Rebekah veering them into a truck) but to put it very simply, he disagrees with Stefan. _No_, Rebekah is not ready to face any sort of traffic that isn't a simulation of Kol running across the street tagging the bumper with his fists, or throwing trees at the windshield. At Stefan's frown, he reasons that it's not Rebekah he's worried about—

It's his car.

While he knows he can just compel Jay Leno to hand over _his_ own car—curse that man for being able to find a Duesenberg _so easily_ in a neighbourhood garage—he likes Ole Betsey. It's his first car, the very one he rolled out of the car dealership in 1926. They say you never forget your first car, and Klaus would rather not put that theory to the test. He doesn't want to have to _remember_ how Stefan had once begged to borrow his Duesy to seduce a rich heiress of noble blood (so to speak); he wants the actual car and not memories of what once was.

And he's not sure Ole Betsey can survive the highway (_he_ doesn't even drive Ole Betsey on the highway!), especially with his sister behind the wheel.

Rebekah doesn't necessarily agree, so Klaus threatens to take the car away for good if she doesn't at least let him demonstrate how to maneuver his car around the heavy traffic.

It's an odd sight to behold: a banged up vintage car (with its side mirror carelessly duct taped back on, one of its hubcaps missing, and a gaping hole in the vinyl top) weaving around shiny Hondas and the occasional Bimmer. Rebekah's trying not to look at her brother's smug face as he expertly cuts across a red convertible (how on earth does Nik manage to make Ole Betsey go _that_ fast without it making that horrid choking noise?) while Kol's complaining (loudly) that this is taking _forever_.

"Bekah shouldn't be allowed _on_ the streets when people are so accustomed—" Kol makes sure her eyes are on his through the reflection of the rearview mirror—"to seeing her in the corner of one."

"Will you just _shut—"_

Rebekah unbuckles her seatbelt—

("What do you think you're doing, Rebekah?" Klaus snaps as the car swerves.)

"—_up_—"

She's on her brother in a flash—

("Get back in your seat, Rebekah," Stefan says, voice a little bit too loud, when the bumper drags painfully along the gravel.)

"—_Kol."_

("That's a nice use of your scarf," Caroline notes.)

She's strangling him now, the terrifying look matching her grip on the red scarf that she has looped tightly around Kol's neck. "Or I will make you."

"Dear sister, didn't you know?" Kol reaches for Rebekah's hands and wrenches them from his neck, and slams her against Stefan—Klaus frantically turns the steering wheel as the car balances precariously on its right-side wheels—hissing through his teeth, "We're already dying. So I say: bring it on."

—

"I can't believe this," Bonnie says flatly.

"Bonnie!" Elena jumps up from here stool, shock flitting across her face for a split second before stammering, "Why aren't you in school?"

"Why aren't _you_ in school?" The witch's eyes narrow as she asks, a little exasperated, "Why isn't _anyone_ in school?"

"I, um, overslept," Elena replies lamely. "And they're here for coffee."

("Ta da," Damon lilts, raising his mug.)

Bonnie doesn't seem to know how to respond to this, so she backtracks instead. "I came to school today with only half my bio presentation because my _partner_ was absent—"

Caroline gasps, eyes averted with guilt. "I am so sorry, I totally blanked."

"—and knowing my partner for the neurotic never-absent control freak that she is," Bonnie continues, "I was just curious to know where she was. Besides…" Her eyes flick to Elena and pass just as quickly. "You've all been so quiet lately."

"That's what I thought too!" Damon exclaims. "High five, girlfriend."

"Look, I'm sorry," Elena says, "but you haven't exactly been looking for me lately."

"And within reason, considering the circumstances!" Bonnie retorts. She sweeps her arm across the room. "And what's all this?"

("Does anyone else here feel like a lamp?" Kol asks his siblings, who either roll their eyes (Klaus) or glare at Bonnie (Rebekah).)

And suddenly it dawns on her. She turns to Elena, a little horrified; a lot betrayed. "You told them."

The shift in the room is enough to make Rebekah ask, "Told us what?"

Elijah immediately steps in between Elena and Bonnie (Bonnie stands her ground). "She only told me. If you want to blame anyone for telling Klaus, blame me."

Kol directs his grim gaze to his brother.

"Nik?" Rebekah questions a white-faced Klaus. "What's Elijah talking about?"

Stefan immediately stands and guides Rebekah to the door. "Come on, Rebekah. We're going driving."

"No, I'm not."

"Oh, yes we are." And with that, Stefan drags Rebekah out the door, leaving Kol to step menacingly towards his older brothers; _What do you know that I don't?_

"Not that much, apparently," Bonnie scoffs. "I'm done."

She leaves, but not before Caroline pushes her chair back and runs out after her.

Elena just looks stricken.

—

"Don't forget your gift pack!" Damon calls as Bonnie stomps down the street. "Here, pass it to her." He tosses the Nescafe three-in-one pack to Caroline.

"Urgh, just—just _shut up_, Damon!" Caroline cries, and tries to keep up with Bonnie. "Bonnie—wait!"

"Look—it's not what it looks li… Will you just hear me out, Bonnie?" Caroline uses her vamp speed to stop Bonnie in her tracks. "I can explain."

"I'm not sure I want to hear it, Caroline." Bonnie's angry now, whirling around to find another path home. "I went to your house and it was empty, so I thought you'd be at the boarding house but guess what—no one's there either."

"Yeah, sorry about that." Damon saunters up easily to the two of them, like they're not running in heels or anything.

Caroline tugs on Bonnie's arm again, helpless, but Bonnie continues as if there had been no interruption by Damon. "And I come over to find you guys bonding over _coffee_ with the _Originals_? Caroline, just because they're dying doesn't redeem them."

"It's exactly like you said, Bonnie," Caroline says quickly. "They're dying, they know it; they're not causing any harm or whatever."

"Not that we're aware of!" Bonnie snaps. "How do you know they're not planning on just burning this whole town to the ground, turning everything to ash?"

"They're not."

Caroline and Bonnie whip around as Elena approaches them, white flags raised and an apology in her eyes.

Bonnie clicks her tongue, unconvinced.

"They're not going to be any trouble," Elena says quietly. "Elijah promised."

"And that's all honorable and well and fine, but in case you've forgotten, he _threatened your life_ not even a week ago!" Bonnie lets out a sharp gust of wind that evaporates in the cold air. "Sometimes you guys are way too forgiving."

"I'm not," Damon pipes up. "I'm still suspicious of the Originals, but hey—better them killing squirrels than us, right?"

"Shut up, Damon," Elena and Caroline sigh simultaneously.

He shrugs. "I'm just saying I'm not as forgiving, is all. Hell, I still haven't forgiven Bonnie for breaking my Fight Club DVD."

"I will _burn_ your eyebrows off," Bonnie seethes.

"While we're talking about burning," Damon says, serious all of a sudden. "Stefan and I haven't forgotten who they are, and we sure as hell haven't forgotten you and what you're capable of. One wrong move and we bring them down."

"Damon—" Elena starts to say, but Damon waves a hand to silence her.

"Does that plot bunny make you feel better?"

Reluctantly, Bonnie nods. "One wrong move," she repeats for confirmation. "Just one."

"Say the word and I'll do it myself," Damon says firmly.

—

"Anything you'd like to tell me, Nik?" Kol skulks around the island counter to face his brothers. "What about you, Elijah?"

There's a silence as Elijah and Klaus exchange a long look. Finally, Elijah says, "Esther's plan worked."

"That's impossible," Kol hisses. "Damon killed that insipid witch and the spell failed."

Elijah takes a careful step towards his brother, hands held out as if to grasp his shoulders. "Yes, but it the way it failed was in the witches' favour."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"It _means_," Klaus says, "that the spell was only prolonged."

Kol looks puzzled, so Klaus continues: "We have twenty-five days to live."

"It's a lot to process," Elijah says as he lays a firm hand on Kol's shoulder. Kol looks as if someone's punched him in the gut, and his hand shoots out to grasp the back of a chair.

"We should sit down and talk this out," he suggests of Kol's ashen face.

"Like hell we should," Kol growls and slams Elijah through the wall, straight into the living room.

—

"That was a _red_ light, Rebekah," Stefan snaps. "You're supposed to stop."

("This wouldn't be happening if I was still driving," Klaus mutters.)

It's not so much Rebekah driving as much as Stefan grasping the wheel every now and then, and she finds it extremely irritating. How is she supposed to prove to Kol that she's a skilfull driver when Stefan keeps taking over the wheel?

That's when she takes her hand off of the steering wheel, in the middle of the busy street where everyone's moving at 80 miles per hour.

"What do you think you're doing?" Stefan bursts out, grabbing onto the whirring steering wheel.

"You insisted on driving, so I'm letting you," Rebekah replies, nose in the air. "Go on, have fun."

("Yes, sister, you're doing a great job at speeding up this curse," Kol mutters, eyes rolled heavenwards.)

Stefan grabs Rebekah's hands and slams them back on the steering wheel, where they stay—not before making Stefan promise not to mess with the steering wheel again. He rolls his eyes and spits out a _Fine_.

She looks pleased and Klaus looks relieved, but it's not even five minutes into their deal when Stefan reaches a hand out to nudge the wheel ever so slightly to the left.

"That's it!" Rebekah cries, and eases down the clutch and promptly slams her foot down on the brake. "Stefan: switch places with Caroline."

Where Stefan had worn a begrudgingly impressed look at how Rebekah's remembered how to stop the car before lies a look of disbelief. "What?"

"You heard me." Rebekah leans towards him, sliding her sunglasses down her nose. "Get in the back of the car and switch with Caroline."

"I don't think that's a good idea, Rebekah," Stefan says firmly, jaw set. "Caroline doesn't even know how this car works."

"Hey, I resent that," Caroline snaps, already kicking the door open. She flutters her fingers and throws a charming smile to disarm the loud honks and the long line of angry drivers behind them, but frowns when someone flips here the finger. "There's no need to be rude!"

"For the love of God, Stefan," Klaus says, running a hand through his hair. "Just do as she says and we'll get through the day."

("We might even get through the morning," Kol adds.)

"Honestly, how different from an auto can it be?" Caroline asks as she straps herself in. Stefan doesn't answer, just sits stoically as Kol leans across Klaus to flash a leering smile. Caroline hides hers as she surveys them from the rearview mirror—Klaus sits in the middle, hands crossed on his chest with the stoniest expression in the world, Stefan's trying to blink back his crazy eyes, and Kol's determined to take up as much leg room as possible. Their whole situation just reeks of awkward subtext.

Stefan can't help but be a backseat driver as Rebekah weaves through the cars—hell, he has every right to be; he's her _teacher_—but Caroline and Rebekah are having too much fun comparing manicures to observe the one-way street they'd veered into.

"Wrong turning, Rebekah!" Klaus snaps, beating Stefan to it.

Rebekah's glancing at Caroline helplessly, _How do I turn around_?

Caroline just shakes her head, frantic and worried, and clutches her knees to her chest. "I don't know!"

They're weaving blindly through the street—a swerve hear and a jerking stop there, but not even Rebekah's terrified shrieks and Caroline's moans of _Make it stop, make it stop, make it stop_ was enough to slow down the truck thundering down the road twenty feet away.

"Move to the right, Rebekah!" Stefan yells urgently, trying to reach past Caroline's shoulder to grab hold of the steering wheel (which Rebekah had let go) but his arm is blocked by the two girls clutching each other, screaming.

(He doesn't blame them—Kol's got Klaus in a tight hold, yelling his ear off… though now that he thinks about it, mostly to annoy the hybrid.)

The truck looms down on them, and Stefan braces himself for the impending collision.

—

"Stop that!" Klaus thunders as Kol expertly throws knives upon knives at him, alternating between his face and his crotch. "Or I'll stick a da—" A knife whizzes towards his forehead and Klaus punches it into the opposite wall, cursing as his fist splits open for a split moment before healing itself.

"You should have just left that stupid dagger in my heart," Kol spits at him, who's trying to make sure Kol's trail of destruction doesn't (completely) destroy Elena's living room. "Could have saved me the painful experience of seeing you in the sixties—your hair was _disgusting_."

"You told me it was far out," Klaus snarls, grabbing Kol around the throat and throttling him into a shelf, trophies and books crashing down around them.

"I lied," Kol sneers. "Learned from the best." He swings his fist back, but finds that it's stuck in midair when Elijah has it in his vice grip. He yanks the trashing Kol off of Klaus, who wipes away the trickle of blood down the corner of his mouth.

"We didn't lie," Elijah says calmly, hands still wrapped easily around Kol as though the younger Original isn't thrashing and snarling and spitting out every curse word he's picked up throughout the ages.

Klaus glares at Kol and uprights the coffee table so he can perch on it. "Not technically."

"Don't I at least merit the truth from you?" Kol wrenches himself from Elijah's grip, straightening his jacket. "I'm sick of this – this _arrangement_ you have: the two of you constantly whispering among yourselves, waving me away and leaving me with Bekah. And you raise your eyebrows in wonder; call me immature—_you're_ the one who makes it so." Kol kicks the shelf to the floor, glass and splinters of wood flying everywhere.

"Kol Mikaelson." At the sound of Elijah's cold voice Kol reluctantly lets go of the television he's about to hurl through the window. It drops onto the carpet with a thud. He turns to Klaus instead, the look of disgust on his face growing. "So that's why you've been hugging me lately."

"Believe me, if I knew what I know now, I wouldn't even dream of letting you two feet near me," Klaus says, eyes narrowing. "You're a—"

"Klaus," Elijah warns, and Klaus falls silent.

When both of his brothers seem sedated enough, Elijah takes a seat in the only upright chair in the whole room and surveys his brothers. "What would you like to know?"

"When did you find out?" Kol demands.

Klaus picks his way through the rubble to rest an elbow on the back of Elijah's chair as the older Original leans forward and touches his fingertips together. Klaus is letting him lead for once, and the irony of their role rehearsal is not lost on Elijah—he just hides his smile. "Five days ago."

"Five—" Kol mutters wordlessly, hands itching to throw something, but one look at Elijah's face makes him change his mind. Sullenly, he asked, "Does Bekah know?"

Klaus and Elijah exchange another long look.

Elijah suddenly looks so very tired and so very old. But that's ridiculous, Kol thinks. They all stopped aging a long time ago.

Klaus just sighs. "If she's anything like the Rebekah we grew up with, she's finding out as we speak."

—

"If I remembered how," Rebekah proclaims heatedly, "I'd stop this bloody car and storm out of it. _What_ were they talking about? _What_ don't I know?"

"Keep your eyes on the road, Rebekah," is all Stefan says.

"Just tell me!" Rebekah slams her fist down on the steering wheel. "What is so important that Klaus and Elijah don't want me to know? I'm their _sister_, for God's sake."

Stefan seems to hesitate, and Rebekah picks up on it. "_Please_, Stefan," she begs, voice soft. "Any other thing I'd let go, but this, I just wan—"

"Esther's plan worked."

Rebekah stops short. "What?"

Stefan rubs his eyes tiredly. "Instead of killing you off instantly, the spell's slowly drawing the life out of you in the span between two moons."

"...What?" Rebekah asks again, knuckles white around the steering wheel, and Stefan can't take it anymore.

"You're dying, alright?" he bites out, hands grasped tight around Rebekah's shoulders. "You're dying and you have twenty-five days and there's nothing, absolutely nothing that could turn this spell around." Only this time, he's not saying it with as much warranty as was the case with Caroline. Now, he's saying it as though he's wishing it could all be untrue.

Rebekah releases herself from Stefan's grip and stares down the road. The car had been slowly rolling downhill throughout their exchange, and she wraps her hands around the wheel and turns left. Keeps driving.

"You knew."

Stefan studies her face. "Yes."

"How long?"

"About five days."

She nods and runs a red light, then another one, and another one, and Stefan doesn't say a single word. It's when she turns the miserable car into a one-way street that he rests a hand on her arm, her too still arm. "You're going the wrong way, Rebekah."

At Stefan's gentle tone, her shoulders start shaking, but she looks ahead. The car keeps puttering down the road. It comes as a wonder yet again to Stefan, how Rebekah can forget something as simple as stopping a car.

"What do I do?" she asks suddenly, her voice a little girl's. "What do I do, what do I do, what do I do?"

Stefan wonders what exactly she's talking about, but doesn't take his hand off of hers as he says, Pull up the handbrake, Rebekah.

Step on the clutch, Rebekah.

Ease down slowly on the breaks, Rebekah.

Lips quivering, she finds that Stefan's guided the car to a slow stop. She's not looking at him (not looking at anything, really), but her hands shake and tremble and dampen with the tears that start trailing down her cheeks.

"Rebekah."

She shakes her head, head still turned away.

Despite his reservations, Stefan reaches for her, but she pushes him away. "Don't, Stefan—not now. Not when I've wanted you to do that this whole time, every single time you say my name."

Stefan blinks. "Reb—"

"I said _stop_," she snarls, furiously wiping away the tears that keep on coming. "Stop looking at me, stop saying my name like you actually care, because you don't—you've been playing me like the _silly little girl_ that I always seem to become around you and I—I ca—" she hiccups, and Stefan ignores the inner turmoil of his mind and pulls Rebekah to his chest. She doesn't push away this time.

He doesn't say anything to calm the sobbing mess that she's become, doesn't say _shh, everything's going to be alright_, doesn't give her any inspiring pep talks.

She cries.

He just holds her.

—

They don't drive for another two days.

—

Stefan skulks around the house, starts to write in his journal but finds he has nothing to say. He distracts himself by growing a beard, watches too many episodes of Teen Mom with Caroline, eats too much of Elena's leftover brownies, and writes down the things people say to him instead.

_She won't talk to any of us_, he scrawls as Elijah tells him that Rebekah hasn't left her room since Wednesday evening.

_Quit moping_, he writes when Damon kicks him off the couch and pushes him to go shower.

His hand moves restlessly, and makes up for his sullenness on Thursday by hounding everyone he knows on Friday, talking to them, pen never once pausing from its skid down his page.

Elena stays over—her house is too much of a mess—and gives him lots of nice things to write about, like _She'll come around_ and _Of course she doesn't hate you, how could she hate you when you were only trying to protect her?_

_She doesn't want to talk to you_, he writes as Klaus lounges on the couch next to him. The hybrid looks like he's about to say more, but when Stefan's hand twitches for his journal, all he does is glare. "Are you writing down everything I say?"

(He doesn't write about his conversations with Caroline, the ones where she joins him in the cemetery, where she sits down next to him, where she asks, "Who's attached now, Stefan?" without a single trace of malice in her voice.)

_That beard's horrid_, he starts to write, but the words never come as his pen clatters against the page, because Rebekah's standing before him, dressed in every colour of the rainbow. Klaus's car keys dangle from her fingers.

"I thought I'd try something new," he says, fingering his chin. He looks up at her, almost in awe, and wants to ask, _Are you really here?_

_Do you know how worried I've been?_

_Do you know what you do to me?  
><em>

But instead settles for, "Rebekah, are you sur—"

She has her finger pressed against his lips and a brave smile pasted on hers. "I never start anything I can't finish."

"I guess this means I should shave," Stefan muses, heading for the bathroom. Later, they make their way out of the house—Caroline joining them in the hallway and Klaus and Kol already leaning against Ole Betsey—and down the road.

The sun hangs high and white in the sky, and they roll the windows all the way down.

—

**tbc**

—

severely lacking in klaroline & elejah, i know, but we already had their thought processes in the last chapter. more in the next one, pinky swear!

oh yes, over the weekend i wrote something new called Hoppípolla featuring evil!klaus, dark!tyler, a reasonable amount of light moments, and a damon/caroline/stefan brotp of epic proportions. if you like this story, safe to say you'd like Hoppipolla too? maybe? hopefully? it'd mean the world to me if you read it and tell me what you think either way!

so my pre-driver's test is tomorrow and i'm terrified. the way i drive is kind of like watching a gazelle getting trampled by a lion on animal planet; it's that painful. and i also have to start looking into college applications, so with everything going on updates might be a little slow - buuuuuuuut i might work faster if you leave a nice review :3

happy leap year, everyone!


	5. i've got nowhere to go

**A/N:** One of my favourite authors—**eenaangel** on Livejournal/**eena-angel2001** here on ff—recommended my fics on her lj in the nicest way possible, so I thought I'd return the favour. Honesltly, you have not experienced Klaroline/Daroline if you haven't read her. Also, her Damon/Care/Stefan fics will make you giggle.

Seriously, she's one of the best people ever.

—

**put down your sword and crown**

.

..

**v****  
><strong>i've got nowhere to go, so don't move so slow

—

In case you've forgotten, Klaus says, I saved you all from being flattened by that truck.

"If it weren't for me, you'd all be nothing but skid marks on the asphalt," he adds with an air of superiority.

Not really, Caroline argues. It's not so much 'saving' as much as vampiring his way to the truck and flicking it to the side of the road with his forefinger. In fact, she says, you probably gave the poor guy a concussion.

"And in case _you've_ forgotten," she continues from the passenger seat, "you might be dying, but you're still invincible. What would probably kill a carful of civilians would probably just leave you with, like, a booboo on your finger or something."

Klaus isn't sure what astounds him more: the fact that she just said 'booboo' or the fact that she's bringing up the curse oh-so-casually. He decides to shrug it off—better this way, no use tiptoeing around each other about it. He marvels once again on how she chooses to view things so... _honestly_.

"When you two are quite done bickering," Rebekah pipes up from her exile to the backseat, "I'd like to get back to my driving lessons."

"You're having it as we speak, Bekah," Klaus says, pointedly making a U-turn without taking down every pedestrian and his dog. "Observing constitutes as learning."

"In other words," Kol says derisively, "I'd rather die at Esther's hands than yours—at least with her my innards won't be strewn all across the streets of Mystic Falls."

"Pity that truck didn't hit us," she screeches, trying to claw Kol's eyes out as Stefan holds her back, "because your body lying in a pool of blood would have brightened this pathetic town considerably."

Kol's eyes flash. Leaning towards his sister, and says, "Dear sister. This morning," he watches her eyes carefully as he continues (with great pleasure), "I replaced your hair mousse with shaving cream."

Unfortunately, Stefan chooses that moment to flex his cramping fingers.

The car almost topples on its side as Rebekah slugs Kol across the face.

—

"Did you know I was dying?" Rebekah asks Caroline as the boys argue over what might have caused Ole Betsey to stutter and die by the side of the road. They're perched on top of the seat cushions that Kol had ripped from the car—

("Oh, the engine isn't under the seats?" Kol asks, astonished, as Klaus slumps against his car, his anguish taking over the better part of his ability of speech. "The cushions must have still been warm from Rebekah's backseat antics all those years ago, then."

"Hey, Kol?" Stefan rests an arm on the car, matching the Original's height. "I think it's about time you shut the hell up.")

—chewing thoughtfully on the chocolate-covered strawberries Elena had packed for Caroline.

"Yes," Caroline replies, mustering up the courage to look Rebekah in the eye. "I'm sorry you had to find out this way."

"But you're not sorry we have to die," Rebekah says slowly, catching on.

Caroline shakes her head.

"You think I deserve it, don't you?" Rebekah prompts, her features hardening. "After all the things I've done to Elena." At least the Original has the decency to look ashamed, though her eyes keep burning bright.

Caroline sighs. "I don't think anyone deserves to die for anyone else—but I do think Esther should have tried to find another wa—"

"Well, I don't," Rebekah snaps, and Caroline looks at her, confused. "If I'm to die, I'd rather it be this way. Better to die for my family than to live alone forever." She looks away, picking the chocolate bits off her strawberry. "I've had enough of that." She peeks at Caroline from under her lashes and takes a deep breath. "After Henrik died, we had a little funeral for him. We buried him with his favourite things. Nik put inside Henrik's grave his own dagger, one Henrik had admired so."

"Rebekah, what—"

"Let me finish," Rebekah whispers harshly, casting aside her strawberry altogether. "I thought it was a nice way to remember Henrik, but I didn't want that. As a child, I wanted bright colours at my funeral, and for everyone I know to show up and for—and for people I love to stand up and say lots of things about me. Nice things. But then mother turned us into vampires, and I realized I'll never get any of that."

Caroline bites her lip and reaches for Rebekah's hand, but the Original snatches it away, swallowing. "I've lived a thousand years, Caroline, and I haven't been nice—not even a little, not at all. So no one's coming to my funeral. No one's going to stand up and tell stories and laugh for me and cry for me. No one."

"Stefan would," Caroline says quietly. "He cares about you, in his own way."

Rebekah snorts. "An unshaved beard hardly counts as caring."

Even Caroline has to smile at that. "It _was_ kind of heinous." Biting down on her thumb, she casts a look to where Klaus is standing with Stefan and Kol, gesturing wildly about the engine. "Everything's changed so much these past few days. In another life—" Caroline pauses, chuckling, "and I know how ridiculous this sounds, but in another life we could have been friends. You know," she adds offhandedly, "if you weren't the crazy bitch who tried to kill Elena."

"Multiple times," Rebekah says, sparing a small smile.

"Yeah, that." Caroline brushes her hair out of her eyes and hugs her legs to her chest. "In another life I would've decorated your locker on your birthday, we could pick out what car you wanted to buy, we could've talked about boys..." she trails off, eyes glazing over.

"That sounds nice," Rebekah sniffs. "But I don't think I'd enjoy our girly chitchats about boys. Especially when they involve my brother."

"Who said anything about—"

"He fancies you," Rebekah says matter-of-factly with a roll of her eyes. "Even _Kol_, with all his mental incapacities can see that. Why do you think he enjoys tormenting Nik about you?"

Sighing, Caroline props her chin on her knees. "You really think so?"

"Obviously." Another roll of the eyes. "But as I said, not a topic I'd want to discuss."

They smile at each other, and it's tight and fleeting, but it's still a smile nonetheless.

—

I think we should establish a few rules, Damon says with a wave of his fork.

"The first rule of these driving lessons is you do not mention them to Bonnie," he says.

"The second rule of these driving lessons," he continues, raising his fork to silence Caroline (who looks like she's about to say something to _kill his buzz_), "is you do not mention them to Bonnie."

Elena rolls her eyes, twirling her spaghetti around her fork. "You've been watching one David Fincher movie too many, Damon."

"I have a point though," Damon insists, stuffing a meatball into his face. "If Bonnie knew of the unspeakable things you were doing—"

"Unspeakable things?" Caroline asks drily. "Really."

"—she'd probably flip a few tables and throw a bookshelf at Klaus, like how Kol did two days ago. It was totally cool though." Damon pauses to take a sip of his drink. "Like _Kung Fu Hustle_."

"I didn't see her today at school," Elena says, frowning.

"She wasn't in Bio," Caroline shrugs. "Did Stefan see…?"

"Going to school would actually require him to get off his ass," Damon interjects, "which he hasn't done much of since. All he does is lurk in the shadows, like a ninj—no, wait. Not nearly as cool as a ninja."

"Do ninjas even keep beards?" enquires Elena. "I swear I saw something… _twitching_ in it yesterday. How long has it been since he showered?"

"I can smell him from here." Caroline shudders. "Like he's in the room."

"That's because I am," Stefan speaks up, sullen.

Elena, Damon and Caroline nearly drop their cutlery as they whip their heads around to see Stefan at the end of the table, picking wearily at his spaghetti. Beard on, shirt stained, eyes dark, alcohol ready in his hand.

Caroline almost reaches out a hand to make sure he's really there, but Damon grabs her arm and shoots her a _Don't, you might scare it off_ look. And he's right—Stefan's looking at them with hollow eyes and looks like someone's glued a dead badger to the bottom half of his face. It's all Elena can do not to grab the bread knife and hack it off of his face. But since they can't do any of that—

all they do is gaze at him with equal parts of fear and wonderment.

At their dumbfounded stares, Stefan explains painstakingly: "I've been here your whole conversation. The whole meal. Even before that, actually, when Caroline and Elena were talking about the Victoria's Secret sale." He turns to Elena (whose eyes are widening in mortification), "And in response to your question, yes, you should get the same panties as Caroline."

"Just not red, though," Damon grimaces. "I like you all black and lacy."

"Shut up, Damon!" Elena snaps, cheeks flaming. She turns back to Stefan and narrows her eyes. "What else have you heard?"

"I now know a bikini wax actually is." Stefan pushes his plate away and cringes. "In excruciating detail."

"You're taking this well," Caroline notes. "At least better than the time I had to explain it to Reb—" Her eyes widen and she pretends to choke on a meatball, but the damage is done. The table falls silent and what little progress Stefan had garnered is dashed when he all but becomes part of his chair—wooden and silent.

The only sound that can be heard is the scrape of Elena's fork against her plate as she asks (tentatively, cautiously), "When was the last time you heard from her?"

"Yesterday." Stefan picks up his fork to stab it through a meatball, his yes trailing to Damon's wine glass – laced with blood – every so often. His brother notices and promptly drains it.

Frowning, Stefan continues: "I drove her home. Her hands were shaking too much. When we got back to the Original Mansion—"

("Maison de Mort," Damon interjects."

"—_when you got to the Original Mansion_?" Caroline presses, making sure the pointy heel of her boot grinds into Damon's shin when she kicks him under the table.)

"—she sort of just… got out of the car, closed it, and walked into her house without a word."

Sighing, Elena pushes her chair back to bring her plate to the sink. "It's a lot to take in," she says over the sound of running water. "Give her time Stefan."

"Because time heals everything, right?" Stefan snaps. "Soon it'll be water under the bridge; just give her time, since it's all she needs."

"You know what _I _need?" Damon stands and raises his finger. "That was a rhetorical question, which you do not need to answer. I need a drink. Who's with me?"

Elena and Caroline are too busy nattering about what Stefan's scribbling in his journal to respond.

—

Damon's pretty sure he can smell blood in the air. It's not the 'crap I cut myself' kind like in Biology class (from what little he remembers of school anyway) where DJ McCracken had accidentally poked her thigh with her pen when he'd strolled into class with his letterman jacket. It's more like the 'oops I accidentally slashed my neck with a chainsaw someone call for help' kind, judging by how potent it was.

He blinks, trying to keep his fangs in check, and follows the scent to the alley behind the Grille, where (sure enough) he can see a writhing mass of torn clothing in a pool of blood. And before him, stood Kol, of dark eyes and bloody mouth.

"I knew there was a reason my Spidey senses were particularly tingling tonight." Damon steps closer, knees bent slightly. "Easy now. Ted's wife there just had a baby."

"Don't get your knickers in a twist," Kol snarls, swiping furiously at his mouth with the back of his hand. "I'm not going to kill him." He backs away from the body and seems to melt into the darkness. Damon thinks Kol's run off, but his from the shadows, his voice comes. Soft. Uncertain. "I mean, I was planning on it, but…"

Damon sighs inwardly and unclenches his fingers. After feeding Ted just enough blood and compelling him to think he had accidentally run head-first into a brick wall (repeatedly), he makes him trot along home with a sedated smile on his face.

"I could have done that," comes Kol's voice again. He's slumped against the back door of the Mystic Grille, watching Damon with wary eyes. He pushes away from the door and brings himself to his full height. "Isn't there anything that I can do on my own?"

"Hey. Come on." Damon raise his hands, white flags waving in the night breeze. "Let's get a drink."

"The last two times I've been alone with you, you snapped my neck and had me daggered," Kol spits. "Excuse my French when I say you can go fuck yourself."

"And we were getting along so well over coffee," Damon says genially, but Kol's not paying attention to him anymore—he's staring at Ted, still lumbering down the street.

Damon's face hardens. "Come on, Mikaelson. Let it go."

"I need a drink," the Original says abruptly, turning back to the door. "Something stiff."

—

I think it's time you go home, Damon says with a set jaw, staring into Matt's eyes.

Matt drops the rag he's holding and nods dazedly, muttering something about checking if the oven's still on. He shoulders past Kol, who (thankfully) barely registers the human he'd attempted to kill two weeks before.

"Leave." Kol picks up Hank the barman by the collar and tosses him aside like a ragdoll. Soon, he's shuffling the bottles around on the shelf, dropping the ones he doesn't quite care for with careless ease. To Damon, he says nonchalantly: "I've always wanted to want to work in a bar."

"I did once." He sidles up next to Kol and grabs the vodka before the Original can toss it over his shoulder. "Back in the 20s. Alcohol was illegal which made it all the more fun."

Kol settles back against the bar and watches blankly as Damon shakes the cocktail shaker with unnecessary flourishes. "Fixed this up for Stefan to help him get through his Ripper days."

He slides the drink expectantly to Kol, who stares down at in incredulously. "It's pink."

"It's a Cosmopolitan," Damon says, just as obviously.

Kol picks up the martini glass, takes a sip, and blanches. "Stefan drank _Cosmopolitans_ to get off his bender?"

"It worked." Damon jabs a finger in Kol's direction. "Don't knock it."

Kol just shrugs and downs the rest of the cocktail with a grimace.

—

9pm and Damon and Kol have already gone through half the vodka in the Grille, mixing up variations of the cocktail that had been so helpful to Stefan in his Ripper days.

10:30pm and Damon's doing manly twirls behind the bar, giving out free spirits to whoever would listen to him rant about how Elena likes switching his coffee with decaf.

11:45pm and Kol and Damon are swaying on their stools, arm on each other's shoulders, belting out the chorus of_ Like a Virgin_.

It's around 1am when Kol gives in and admits that Cosmopolitans _are the best thing ever_. Soon after that, Damon's coughing back his third shot of tequila and declaring himself emotionally bankrupt—the girl he's in love with spends all her time with a vampire who's dying and he's getting drunk with the punk he'd wanted to stake just a few days earlier.

"Four!" Kol hollers, and the two of them throw their heads back and let the tequila burn down their throats.

"I used to think Stefan hated me," Damon slurs. "That's why I like reading his journal—I stopped after finding out he had a one night stand with a three-toed redhead though…"

"My mother tried to have us killed," Kol counters, swinging his martini glass in Damon's direction. He misses by a few feet. "O true miserie! Thy plan hath succeeded."

Damon just nods, face solemn and hair sticking out in every direction. "That's family for you."

"Family." Kol scoffs, slapping his palm on the counter for another Cosmopolitan. Damon drunkenly obliges, splashing in water instead of vodka, an uncut lime and the top of the bottle of cranberry juice. Kol doesn't seem to notice. "We made a pact. Always and forever. But somehow I always seem to get left behind."

Somewhere in the recesses of Damon's mind, he thinks he feels pity—but no, the (very tiny) sober part of his mind argues.

He thinks he can relate, but hell no, he's not nearly drunk enough to take that thought sitting down. He slams some scotch into his mouth and nearly gags, but even that's not enough to drown out Kol's inebriated monologue.

"Why would—why would Nik and Elijah do that?" Kol asks, eyes surprisingly clear for someone who's had thirteen cocktails, four shots and two bottles of gin. "For…" Kol frowns, struggling with her name, and it comes to him a moment later. "For Bekah?"

Damon groans, resting his head down on the bar top. "'Cuz das what people do."

"Wrong!" Kol says triumphantly, hurling his glass at the dartboard. "That's what _grown_ people do. Set aside their own miseries. All that." He rubs a hand over his tired eyes, and Damon desperately presses his Scotch to Kol, but he just waves it off.

"I wanted to prove to mother that she's wrong—I didn't do this to myself." Kol shakes his head and sighs. "Time ravages everything, tears everything apart. I used to think I had all the time in the world."

"It's time's fault," Damon agrees quickly. "Now drink—bottom's up."

Kol downs his shot absently, and Damon groans in exasperation.

"I wanted to prove to her," he says again, "that I'm not the monster she makes me out to be. The monster she wants to stamp out so badly. And now I'll never get to." He slides his glass down the bar and watches as it zooms past the upended bottles and pools of liquor, until inevitably, it slows down.

Damon expects it to drop to the floor and crash into a million pieces, but it never does.

—

"Elijah?"

Elijah looks up from the book he's reading to see Rebekah standing uncertainly, just outside his door. He doesn't say a word, just sets his book on his bedside table and smoothes the space next to him. Rebekah all but hurtles towards his bed and settles into his arms, her lips quivering but her eyes quite dry.

"Is it true? What Stefan told me?"

Elijah strokes her hair and lets out a slow breath. "Yes."

She shudders, and he tightens his hold around her shoulder. "And there's really nothing we can do about it?"

He shakes his head. "No."

She lets out a strangled cry, and he just shushes her. "Crying won't change a thing, Bekah."

But it's then that she cries, because Elijah's not one for pet names. "I was learning how to drive," she bites out, ruining Elijah's shirt with her tears. "Now I'll never get to."

Gently, Elijah props her chin up with the flat of his forefinger. "And who's to say you can't?"

She blinks her eyes up at him and sniffles. "But we're dying."

"Doesn't mean we've stopped living."

She sits up, letting out a small laugh. "Is this one of the things you picked up from spending all your time with humans?"

"Bekah," Elijah chuckles, "if you'd only let yourself remember, we were human once too. Don't let Niklaus make you think differently."

"It's so easy to forget," she whispers into his shoulder. Rain's starting to fall against their window, and the situation she's stuck in is still wretched, and will continue being wretched, but with Elijah lying beside her she doesn't feel so alone.

—

**tbc**

**—**

**A/N:** I just got back and I'm horribly exhausted, but I wanted to finish this before TVD airs tomorrow and totally wrecks what little canon this story of mine's held onto.

Also, do you read really long author's notes? Because lately I've had this plot bunny scampering around in my mind, as well as a rough summary of it. "_Elena's ready to walk down the aisle, but both the Salvatores and the Upper East Side are hellbent on stopping her_." Yes, you read right—a crossover with Gossip Girl. Since DJ (flesh and bone telephone) dared me to write Delena with no angst, straight up happy, this started festering away in my mind.

And if you've read my fics, you'd know I have an attachment to ensemble fics, so you'd have a rough idea of what to expect. Question is, would you read it?

Anyway, thanks for putting up with this short chapter. Longer ones to come? Please review, you with the lovely face.


	6. i'm feeling the same thing day after day

Idk what my problem is—if I get a full night's sleep, I won't be able to sleep the day after. Lack of sleep is affecting my writing in the most horrible of ways. I HAVEN'T EVEN REVIEWED flesh and bone telephone's FANTASTIC EPIC YET. Yes. It is an epic, so go read it (but by the time I finished writing this chapter I'd already reviewed, and so should you).

**This chapter is for:** it's just real (aka the gossip goat), Spring of Darkness, KTxx, solemnly-up-to-no-good, , pariswindspeed and WanderingJane, because they _always_review without fail. I'm sure I'm missing a few people and I'm really truly very sorry; I'm just so tired atm. Chapter title courtesy of The Submarines.

—

**put down your sword and crown**

.

**vi**  
>you're going away<br>and i'm feeling the same thing, day after day  
>(i can't let it go)<p>

—

On Saturday, with T-minus 22 days until the next fool moon, Elena finds herself at school, of all places, folding up silver and white construction paper and halfheartedly listening to Caroline's lectures of "You're folding it wrong!" and "Stop eating the glue, Matt" and "_Every snowflake is an individual snowflake"_.

Remind me again, she says to Bonnie while the witch perches on a ladder in front of the cafeteria doors, why we're sticking up snowflakes and ice glaciers around the school when winter is so clearly over?

The two of them look over their shoulders at Caroline, who's berating Stefan for having the _audacity_ to not know which colour swatch to choose.

"How can you _not_ know the difference between Thistle Gray and Slate Gray?" Caroline demands shrilly, making Damon-eyes at him. She shakes the colour swathes under his nose again. "Do you _not_ care about prom? Is that it, Stefan? Are you _intentionally_ trying to ruin me? Are you, Stefan? _Are you_?"

"Now that I think about it," Bonnie says quickly, "snowflakes are great."

Elena nods, hurriedly turning away from the _Save me and I will give you all the puppies in the world_ look Stefan's throwing at her. "Yeah, no complaints here."

There's a silence as Elena passes the paper snowflakes to Bonnie, who sticks them artfully above the cafeteria doors. Grazing the floor with the toe of her sneaker, Elena asks, "How's… How's your mom?"

Bonnie looks at her from the corner of her eye. "She's a vampire. Pass me a silver one, would you?"

Elena tries to think of something witty to say, like 'Hey, these two snowflakes are alike! _Unforgivable._' a la Caroline, but it just won't make it past her lips. Instead, she stands on her tiptoes to reach Bonnie, thinking school can't end faster enough.

—

On Saturday evening, T-minus 22 days until the next full moon, Caroline doesn't go home immediately after Rebekah's driving lesson—which consisted of her chaining Kol to the back of Ole Betsey and driving at high speeds, ignoring Klaus when he berates her about the bumper and rolling her eyes when Stefan says Kol might, _just a hunch here_, feel _slightly_ uncomfortable bumping along the tarmac?—but lingers in the kitchen of the Original Mansion with Stefan.

"You're still here," he notes, helping himself to Rebekah's stash of cranberry juice.

She mumbles something along the lines of, "Too quiet at home", but Stefan's got that stupid knowing look in his eyes _again_.

"He's upstairs," he says, so totally casual and so totally smirking.

She wants to so totally slam the glass bottle he's sipping from up his so totally stupid face, but he leans forward over the counter towards her. With his serious vampire face on and his eyes locked on hers, he raises his hand—

and so totally flicks her nose with his forefinger.

"What th—that was uncalled for!" she splutters, drawing back. "What the hell, Stefanita?"

He just shakes his head, finishing off the rest of his drink and if Caroline hadn't watched Grease for just about 67 times, she couldn't have recognized him _swaggering_ out the door. She would have gaped, but she wouldn't have taken it as lightly as she's taking it now.

Anyway.

"Carpe diem, Forbes," he calls over his shoulder.

—

On Saturday night, T-minus 22 days until the next full moon, Stefan leans back against Rebekah's door frame and raises his eyes to the vaulted ceiling, to her delicate lace curtains, to her king-sized canopy bed with the soft white draping. Fit for a princess, he smiles.

The sound of running water from her bathroom stops and she steps out, hair done up in pigtails and face free of make-up. Stefan decides he likes her this way, especially in her sheep print pajamas (the fact that she even owns a pair never ceases to surprise him) and soft bare feet.

"Stefan." She blinks, hands reaching up to fluff her hair self-consciously. "I thought you'd left."

"And I thought," he says as he pushes himself away from her door, "you'd like to try driving at night." He jingles Klaus' much coveted car keys and Rebekah lets a smirk grow on her lips.

"How'd you get those? Nik doesn't ever let it get out of his sight."

Stefan shrugs easily. "Found them on the floor somewhere."

"Liar," she retorts with glee and pulls him out of the room with her. She doesn't bother to change out of her pajamas and Stefan doesn't tell her how amazed he is about that.

—

On Sunday at midnight, T-minus 21 days until the next full moon, and Caroline's trudging across the lawn of Maison de Mort—the name's stuck, alright?—to where her car is parked, hands in her pockets and curses (of which are directed to Stefan) falling from her lips.

_Carpe diem_, she scoffs, kicking at a dried leaf. If anyone's got any _diem_ to carpe, it's him. With his stupid freshly-shaved chin and his carting of Rebekah around in that stupid old car. That stupid old car that looks like it's been to hell and back in the span of just 9 days. That stupid old car that Kol's determined to stain with his Cosmopolitans—

(Kol drinks Cosmos? she wonders absently)

—that stupid old car that has her wrapped up in nerves and tearing at the seams. That stupid old car that smells reminiscently like…

"I'd greet you in kind, but that's a lot of profanity for a nighttime walk."

…Klaus.

Her feet stops mid-stride and her lips stop mid-_fuck you and your squirrel fetish._ "What are you doing here?" she asks, almost snidely. It's not every day she's caught with her foot lodged in her mouth, alright?

Klaus doesn't skip a beat. "I live here."

"Oh." Open your mouth wider, Caroline. Shove your foot further in. "How dandy."

Klaus shakes his head and unfolds himself from the foot of the tree he'd been leaning against, ever-present sketchpad in hand.

"What is there to draw in the dark?" she blurts out. "You can't see anything."

"I see you." He tucks his sketchbook in the crook of his elbow and turns around, back to his house. "Have a nice walk, Caroline."

"Wait."

And he does, even when she just stares at him, not saying anything. She bites her bottom lip, almost wants to cry in the incoherency of the moment, almost wants to tell him to not go, just wait, just wait until she gathers her wits and lets out a sentence that doesn't make him retreat back into his shell—

Klaus steps closer, his eyes locking onto hers. Their breath comes up in great plumes around their faces and the crickets sing.

Caroline feels like the next thing to come out of her mouth would either make or break the moment. She parts her lips. "Do you—"

"I'd love to."

—

On Sunday, just a little past midnight; T-minus 21 days until the next full moon, Elena sits on the ledge of her window, a mug of hot chocolate in her hand. She could have stayed at the Salvatore boardinghouse again, she knows, since her living room's basically looks like a drunk Jack Sparrow had blasted it apart looking for rum, but she figures she's imposed on them enough.

She swings her feet, watching her toes catch the moonlight, and nearly drops her hot chocolate when a gust of wind suddenly brings Elijah before her.

It's amazing, she marvels, how warm he smells on such a cold night. Like cinnamon and sandalwood. Cedar and chocolate spice and the crunch of dried leaves. Like the forest on a late autumn day.

"Careful now," he says, a smile on his face as she scooches aside to let him into her room. "You could fall."

"I'm not worried," she says, and slides her window closed. "You'll just catch me."

Elijah places her macaroons on her bed and goes to her bookshelf, as he always does. It occurs to her that autumn's always been her favourite season.

—

They walk. She talks. He listens.

It's 12:34am.

"Steven moved to Nice," she tells him, letting her feet crunch down on the damp grass, listening to her voice echoing across the vast lawn. "I miss him a lot, but he said that's what they'd always wanted. Him and dad. Rear some geese, maybe build a stable…" she trails off, eyes fogging over. "Grow old. Die young."

"I wanted to visit them in the winter and eat grapes in the summer and sneak off with some wine in the fall," Caroline says.

"That was a hope," she says.

"Steven said they'd been planning on adopting a baby girl, tiny and beautiful. He'd shown me pictures. I was going to be a big sister." She lowers her eyes, down to her fingers getting tangled up in the long sleeves of her coat.

"That was a dream," she says.

They walk on. Down the road, past the Grille, hovering at the mouth of the cemetery before moving on to the park. She sits down at one of the swings, looking up at him. "Well?" she says expectantly.

Klaus heaves a sigh of resignation and settles down in the swing next to her. It creaks when he toes the ground with his shoe, swaying lightly to and fro. His sketchbook lies between them, the Pandora's Box of sketchbooks, the bane of her existence.

She wants to peek into it so bad, she realizes.

"And—everything you want in life?" Klaus finally asks, his voice gruff from the night air. (At least, that's what he tells himself.)

Caroline looks at him. He looks back.

"I don't know yet," she says, and he believes her.

—

They drive. He teaches. She takes it in.

It's 12:55am.

Rebekah makes a U-turn without taking down a tree. Stefan nods in encouragement.

Rebekah veers the car into an empty spot, mindful of the dark shadows obscuring her view. Stefan smiles.

A squirrel scampers across the road on their way home and she grips the steering wheel, eyes widening. She almost glances at Stefan—almost—but takes a deep breath, palms the hand brake, eases her foot down on the clutch and steps on the brake lightly.

The car stops without a hitch. He kisses her then, and it's blind and reckless and all-consuming and all Rebekah. When she pulls away, her eyes are glassy and his hair is tousled from her wandering fingers.

"What now?" she asks, and despite everything, despite knowing she has nothing left to lose, she's still afraid of the answer.

"You drive," he says simply.

—

They read. He makes funny sounds without realizing it. She laughs.

It's 1:27am.

Elena makes him mint tea and Elijah smiles knowingly over the rim of his teacup and she shakes her head—their very own inside joke.

—

Elena sticks her head around the corner and breathes a sigh of relief when she sees the hallways clear of students. She hurries past the lockers, the sound of her sneakers (which she'd forgotten to lace up in her hurry to escape the locker room) thudding loudly on the floor, bouncing against the sounds of the pep rally coming from the gym.

She's almost at the door—her fingers can practically _feel_ the smooth metal of the handle—just ten more steps, seven, three—

"Look who's skipping the pep rally!"

An inhuman shriek rips from her throat and she trips over her untied shoelaces, crashing painfully to the linoleum floor. Her pompoms fly out of her unzipped bag and her megaphone rolls away as Caroline smiles down triumphantly at her.

"I was… getting my spare pompoms from my car?" Elena tries, but Caroline just rolls her eyes and helps tug her to her feet.

"Didn't Matt drive you today?" Caroline asks, eyebrow cocked. "And I put the ban on spare pompoms when Damon started stealing them to make little outfits for his precious crow. Remember?"

Elena grips the strap of her bag, looking defeated. "Fine. I was bailing, I'm a horrible person, et cetera et cetera," she says gloomily. "Now can I go?"

Caroline thins her lips and tilts her head to the side. "You're sneaking off to see Elijah, aren't you?"

Elena opens her mouth to answer, but no sound comes out. It's then she realizes that she's about to shoot off another excuse, another misbegotten fact on why she'd rather be spending time with a _dying_ _man_ than cheer on their football team, who they all know is just going to tank at the next game anyway.

Why she'd rather do useless things like watch Jersey Shore with Elijah and cook too much chilli that Elijah ends up finishing as to not hurt her feelings.

Why she'd rather bail on Bonnie's much-scrutinized box-motion one-foot-flip side-kick routine to watch Elijah get that serene look on his face just as she's about to fall asleep.

But then she looks at the careless way Caroline's swept her hair— a far cry from the rigid, so-much-hairspray-global-warming's-coming-ten-minutes-earlier high ponytail—and lets her eyes trail downwards—

and gasps.

"You're not wearing socks," Elena gapes, and squints up at her best friend. "You're wearing shoes without socks. You're wearing your cheer shoes. Without socks."

The blonde curls her lip. "Guilty."

Elena says (almost suspiciously), "You were planning on bailing too, weren't you?"

Caroline laughs, a carefree tinkle, and taps Elena's button nose. "Guilty!" she says again and twirls her car keys around her forefinger. "Come on, I'll drive. Matt told me the last time you did, you backed into an Original."

"This town's too damn dark," Elena grumbles, tossing her bag over her shoulder.

They push through the double doors of Mystic Falls High School and the late morning sun engulfs them completely.

—

Stefan's scanning the field and squinting his eyes up at the bleachers, but one look at Bonnie frantically putting together a last-minute-routine just about confirms his suspicions. He groans out a curse and yanks his helmet off, tossing it to Matt.

"Your game," he calls, and runs off before Matt can stop him.

—

"_Ahah!"_ Damon all but kicks the kitchen door open, pointing a triumphant finger at the vampires (and and doppelganger) sitting around the table. "Playing hookey, are we now?"

("Hookey?" Rebekah repeats blankly. "What is that? It sounds like the name of a call girl."

"_You_ would know, Bek," Kol snickers.)

Elena raises an eyebrow. "Why are you here, Damon?"

He strolls over to where they're sitting and helps himself to a croissant. "Stefan told me what naughty kids you've been. He's off looking for you at your house." He adds smugly, "I got to check here 'cause I beat him in rock, paper, scissors. I keep _telling _him: always go for the rock."

"Really, what are you nattering on about?" Rebekah snaps.

"I heard you're a bona fide driver now, Beks." Damon grins down at her. "So I made t-shirts out of some pompoms I… conveniently found."

"I knew it!" Caroline exclaims as she steps into the kitchen. She folds her arms over her chest, glaring. "Do you know how hard it is to find red and navy pompoms around here? I had to custom-order it _online_, Damon."

"I know naught of these navy pompoms you speak of," Damon says with dignity. He turns to Kol and nods. "Go get them."

The amount of glee in Kol's bouncing step is enough to launch Rebekah off her stool and in Damon's face. "What have you and my nuisance of a brother been up to?"

"Just celebrating you and your driving skills," Damon says genially. "Can I come, by the way?"

"No," everyone snaps simultaneously (Klaus being the loudest).

"I don't want you anywhere near my car," Klaus growls.

Speaking of which, Elijah speaks up. "I'd like to see for myself how Rebekah drives."

"Sure," Caroline enthuses, popping a raspberry into her mouth.

Klaus stretches in his seat. "It's a bit of a bind, but I'm sure you'd fit right in."

"You should see me park!" Rebekah grins, clapping her hands together.

(Damon smacks the refrigerator. "_Seriously_?")

"This also means," Rebekah continues with great pleasure, "Kol won't be coming along with us today."

"I won't be the one to break the news to him," Klaus smirks.

They hear Kol bounding down the hallway, and Damon's eyes widen. Oh shit.

"Bekah!" he calls out, something red and sparkly and his hands. "Look what we—"

Everyone stares as Damon roundhouse tackles him to the ground and tears the shirt out of his hands. He tries to smuggle it behind his back, but Rebekah's too fast for him—she's already wrestling it from his grip and smacking her palm into his face when he tries to bite her hands.

"Let _go_," she snarls.

"Not in a million years," he bites back, but the shirt slips from his hands and Rebekah waves it in the air in triumph—until she sees the words gracing the front of the shirt. Her lips move wordlessly as Elena hides her laughing face.

"'DANGER: STRUMPET DRIVING'," Caroline blurts out. "'MAY RESULT IN: DEATH'."

"We were trying to go for irony?" Damon tries as Rebekah rounds on him, eyes on fire.

"It was my idea!" Kol says with pride. "I thought we'd all wear it today. _Bags on the passenger seat_."

There's a pause. Rebekah smirks, Elena smiles and looks away, Elijah just looks on in interest, and Klaus leans forward in anticipation. Caroline looks at Damon pointedly.

The Salvabro clears his throat and puts a hand on Kol's shoulder. "Sorry, Kol. You've been voted off the island."

"I beg your pardon?" Kol frowns.

"There are five photos in my hands," Damon says with a straight face, "and these photos represent the people still in the running to become Rebekah's next defiled passengers."

(Elijah has to hold onto Rebekah's wrist to stop her from lunging at Damon.)

"What are you talking about?" Kol blithers. "I see no photographs—"

Damon tries again. "You're fired."

"What?"

"For the love of—" Klaus rolls his eyes heavenward and shoulders Damon on his way out the kitchen. "Elijah's coming with us. You aren't."

"But—what is this—I don't—" Kol looks at them in turn, a look of deep betrayal etched on his face as he splutters: "But I made t-shirts!"

—

"Wow," Elena says.

Elijah turns to her, lips quirked. "What is it?"

"Nothing, it's just…" She makes her way behind him, looking at him through the reflection of his mirror. "I don't think I've ever seen you without your suit. In _sweatpants_, no less."

"Klaus says this can get quite brutal," Elijah says, rolling his tie up and tucking it into his drawer. "And besides," he says with an inaudible sniff, "these pants are Armani."

("Figures," Elena mutters.)

He turns abruptly, something Elena isn't prepared for, and she finds her face buries in his chest. If she turns her head _just_ so, she ventures, her ear would be right where his heart is. She swallows, looking up at Elijah through her lashes.

Elijah doesn't step back. Neither does she.

"Elena," he says softly, and it's almost like a song. "How do I look?"

It takes her a while, and she crinkles her eyebrow in thought. Finally, she settles on: "Human."

Elijah looks delighted.

—

"Why did you insist on coming," Caroline asks as she ducks under a branch that hangs low, "if you were just going to bail in the end?"

Klaus nudges her slightly and overtakes her, picking his way expertly past the roots poking out of the ground. "Kol's been getting his way too much. Keep up, won't you?"

Caroline rolls her eyes and picks up her pace to run past him (making sure to kick at his legs in the process) and pretty soon she loses sight of him through the thicket. When she reaches the stream (the same one on Rebekah's second day of her driving lessons), she kicks off her shoes and gathers the wild flowers in her hands, casting the weeds aside and braiding the daisies into her hair—a neat trick Rebekah had taught her. She's on her third daisy when Klaus finally appears, sketchbook hanging loosely from his hand.

Of course, she thinks.

What she says is: "Took you long enough."

Klaus just shakes his head, an odd look crossing his face. "I feel tired today." He settles down against a fallen tree and flips his sketchbook open, and the trouble in his eyes is chased away by one of—dare she say it?—serenity.

She looks at him, the sun casting halos around the crown of daisies she's woven into her golden hair, a pretty little picture set against the silver sound of the running stream. Klaus swallows—it aches to look at her sometimes.

"What do you draw in there?" she asks tentatively, eyes on the flowers she's arranging on the ground. When she looks up, Klaus is already holding out the book to her and she flicks her eyes to his before taking it. She hadn't expected such an abrupt answer.

The first page. She squints at it, tries to make out the differences in the shading and the coarse lines along the edges of the paper. "It's… the tunnels Elena was telling me about?"

Klaus. "The very one that runs under our feet." He watches her with guarded eyes.

She flips to the next page and sees the Maison de Mort—but there's something different about it. Even in the brightest of daylights, the Mansion usually has an air of stillness to it, of lonely days and dark nights. In Klaus' sketch, it looks vibrant and full of life. "It feels like home," she says softly.

Klaus presses his lips together.

She turns the page and sees water crashing down on moss-covered rocks—the waterfall daddy would bring her to on lost weekends years ago. Mom would pack them a cold breakfast, always flapjacks filled with raspberry jelly, and send them off with a kiss. She'd laugh the whole hike, and squeal when daddy tosses her playfully into the water.

She turns the page. She doesn't really want to think about that right now. It's funny, she thinks as she turns page after page after page, how much beauty Klaus brings to his drawings. There's the clearing in the woods where the sun hits the dappled leaves just right; an arrow stuck in the bark of a tree. Every few pages she'd see Rebekah biting into an apple, her eyes wide and waiting—or Kol sleeping with his mouth wide open. Most pages it's things that's never struck her that he would draw: simple things, like rain splatters across a window or the sky at first light.

"What are these?" she asks, running a hand across unfathomable eyes glowing against a stark black charcoal background—wolf's eyes, she realizes.

Klaus seems hesitant to answer, but he does anyway. "It's how I want to remember things." He looks up at the sky and tosses a pebble straight into the sun. Caroline waits for the sound of it coming down, but it never does.

"How I hope to remember things, anyway," Klaus continues. "It's the things I'd like to dream about—if the fate Esther's bestowed upon us is kind enough to allow that."

Caroline blinks down at the pages and it all comes together. "Everything you want in life." She reaches the end of the book. "I'm not in any of them," she says (like it's a surprise) before she can stop herself, and she thinks she feels disappointed—she's not sure.

Klaus looks at her then, really looks at her. "Would you like to be?"

—

"How am I doing?" Rebekah asks, a smile on her face and wind in her hair. She glances at her older brother and almost pouts—she misses his old hair, which would have swayed along with hers in the late afternoon breeze.

"Wonderfully," Elijah says, rolling the windows down. "I was expecting you to hit a fire hydrant."

("I wasn't," Stefan says from the backseat. "She's already hit every single one in town.")

Rebekah picks up the speed and turns up the music—she'd made Stefan burn her a CD filled with Gene Austin and Al Johnson, a far cry from "_walking down the street in my new lafreak, yeah_"—and taps her gloved fingers on the steering wheel, the tires gliding smoothly along the tarmac and Stefan looking relaxed in the backseat, until—

"Rebekah!" Elijah warns, but Kol's already hurtling his way towards the car, the look on his face reminiscent to the look he'd given Klaus as he watches Finn stab a dagger through his palm shortly after his undaggering.

Rebekah tries to swerve but it's too late—she car collides with Kol with a crash and a bang.

"_Kol fucking Mikaelson!"_ She wants to scream murder at her brother and tear that brilliantly smug look off of his face, until she realizes he's not grinning anymore.

—

"This is taking for-_ever_!" Champion whiner Caroline Forbes exclaims, throwing her arms up.

"You're the one who insisted I draw you, love," Klaus says patiently, eyes flicking to her neck, (and her eyes and her hair—all over) every so often. "Now lay still."

She wrinkles her nose at him but does as she's told, leaning back casually against the fallen tree. Her knees are crossed and her skin looks kissed by the late spring sun, and she channels Cleopatra in her sultry smile.

"Stop doing that thing with your lips," Klaus says after a while. "It's distracting."

Caroline frowns. "What thing?"

"_That_," he gestures painstakingly, rolling his eyes.

Caroline wipes her face clean of any seductive smirks and rolls her eyes. "I'm not doing anything."

"Yes you _are_."

She crosses her arms over her chest indignantly, and gone is the careless lounge she'd so carefully constructed of her limbs for a whole half an hour. "This is how I always look."

He puts his book aside. "I can't finish this."

"Jerk move," Caroline gripes, getting to her feet. "What was the point of making me bend and twist all sorts of different positions if you're just going to go all half-assed about it?"

"At least now we know you're flexible," he says, a quirk to his lips, but Caroline shoves her hands against his chest and smirks triumphantly when he stumbles back. He glares at her and moves to get up, but she pushes her hands against his chest again, and this time he trips on a root and tries regain his footing, but crashes into the stream instead, the jagged rocks tearing into his hands and the water soaking his jeans.

How silly, a part of her brain whispers and she giggles manically to herself.

"Mature of you, sweetheart," he grouses, and brushes himself off. His blood leaves a light smudging on his jacket and he glares at her again. "These is - was - my favourite jacket."

"Sorry," she says, and refrains from smiling. She takes his hands in her own and inspects the wound. "That looks bad."

"It'll heal," he says, rolling his eyes. He bends down to pick up his discarded sketchbook and makes his way out of the clearing, not bothering to wait for her.

—

"Bek," Kol says, looking up from the road. There's blood running down his forehead and he blinks rapidly, trying to differentiate between the two Elijahs that are suddenly swimming before his eyes. "My head hurts."

"Serves you right," she says, but there's no venom in her voice. "What were you thinking, running into the car—bloody idiot."

"Whatever," Kol snaps, lowering his head onto his knees. "I don't like being left behind. And there's no need to stomp so loud, Stefan."

Stefan exchanges a look with Elijah. "No one's stomping."

—

"Hey—Klaus." She traipses after him, and nudges his shoulder with her own. "I _said_ I was sorry."

"I appreciate the gravity of the gesture, sweetheart—I really do," he says drily, "but I've never drawn something I didn't get a chance to finish."

He would have storm off after saying that—_how typical of you, Nik,_ he can hear his sister say—but Caroline's in his path, a pout to her lips. "Then finish it," she insists, and takes his hand again, guiding him out of the trees and back to the stream. She offers a toothy smile and flutters her eyelashes as she says, "I promise not to move around so much this time—I'll even, like, I don't know, let you do what you want with me."

Klaus blinks. "Do what I want with you?" He takes a step closer, and she gulps—_oh shit_.

"Kay, so that might have been taken out of context," she starts to say, but the words aren't coming out anymore because his lips are blocking them, his hands cupping her face. Caroline almost steps back in surprise, but his hands have already moved to the back of her neck, pushing her sleek curls away from her shoulder, running a warm finger down her neck. She can't help it—she shivers. His other hand moves down the small of her back, pressing her closer, and she coils her arms around his neck, her lips moving against his in a way that makes her wonder exactly _why_ she hadn't done this yet. Kiss him, she means. All those opportunities, all those moments being stuck together in tight enclosed spa… the thought is cut short by Klaus running his tongue across her lower lip and her knees almost give way.

"You're horrible," she groans, because it's all she can think of at the moment. In retaliation, she bites down on _his_ lip, hard enough to draw blood.

Klaus pulls away, smirking. "You didn't seem to mind."

She pushes away from him, but he's already seen the smile on her face. "Like I said—you're horrible." Still, she reaches out a finger to wipe away the blood from his lips—and keeps her eyes on his when she slowly, tantalizingly runs a tongue across her forefinger for a taste and she lets out a low moan, her eyes sparkling. "But you taste good."

Klaus swallows. "If I weren't already dying," he says unapologetically, "I'd say you were going to be the death of me."

She's about to shoot off with something witty, but frowns at the blood beading on his lower lip. "Your lip—"

"It'll heal," Klaus says again. "Like my hands, remember?" He raises them, but Caroline isn't reassured, not one bit—

because the gash in his hands is still there.

"Klaus—" she starts to say, but he's already whipping his head around, ducking around trees and past bushes while she trips after him, her still heart stuttering every so often. He finds what he's looking for—a fluffy white bunny, and absolutely tears into it with his teeth, but promptly gags. He spits the blood out onto the forest ground, wiping at his mouth with the back of his hand.

"Disgusting," Klaus says, and Caroline nearly passes out.

—

Stefan's head is spinning. His eyes are darkening around the edges and he can feel his fangs extending as a worried Rebekah helps Kol up. Elijah's asking him questions, questions upon useless questions, like _What colour are my eyes?_ (brown) and _How many fingers am I holding up?_ (three) _What did you do this morning? _(put bleach into Rebekah's shampoo).

Elijah turns to Stefan, wants to ask Stefan if Kol looks alright, but he's one second too late—Stefan's lunging towards Kol, his eyes dark and feral, his fangs bared.

"Stefan—" Elijah grunts, trying to push him off but to no avail.

"_Stefan_, _no!" _Rebekah wants to swallow her scream, but it pushes past her lips anyway when Stefan sinks his teeth into Kol's neck.

—

**tbc**


	7. wait for the sunrise, i'm worlds away

I failed my fucking driving test. My instructor was clutching at his seat and gasping, ARE YOU TRYING TO KILL ME. Brahasfhdf.

This chapter is (still) for Emmy, because **a)** she changed her name to gossip goat simply because I asked her to and **b)** I had to find out from _livejournal_ that it was your birthday? Gurrrl are you serious? JEEZ. So aside from that graphic I made you I am also dedicating this chapter of shmexytimes to you. Also, GO WISH HER A HAPPY BELATED BIRTHDAY IN A REVIEW FOR HER FANTASTIC ONESHOT. One of my favourites forever, k?

This chapter is most definitely _not_ dedicated to DJ (flesh and bone telephone) because she still hasn't updated Room on Fire (of course, by the time I finished this she already had, so…) _or _for here live none but the sly. Instead she wrote a fricken oneshot that I can't even smother with a review because I DON'T KNOW THAT FANDOM. SO NO, DJ. THIS CHAPTER IS NOT FOR YOU. (…_makes mental note to watch movie later_.)

**this chapter**: unbeta'd, my mistakes are my mistakes, if you see any feel free to call me out on it. going to bed now, i am so spent. please leave feedback, i'm kind of in love with this chapter and i'd love to hear what you think. oh, and -

choke on the Klaroline/Elejah in this chapter, just _choke on it_

—

**put down your sword and crown**

.

..

**vii**  
>as i wait for the sunrise i'm worlds away<br>but all the continents dividing couldn't take me from you

—

I'm in here, she says.

Lavender. He can smell lavender, and peppermint, and… he lifts his nose, his eyebrows coming together in a frown; takes a tentative sniff—citrus.

He hears her voice calling his name from down the hall and walks slowly towards it, clenching and unclenching his fists. The door is slightly ajar and he can feel a thundering in his ears, a rush of blood to the head.

He pushes it open.

The lavender smell is stronger here, and he can taste it on his tongue: heady and sweet. Like a drop of honeysuckle on a rainy morning. He can barely see anything through the steam, but makes his way to the edge of the bathtub. Her fingers splash in the water, and from the foam and the bubbles rose an Aphrodite, of tousled hair knotted at the top of her head and lips laced with a tempting smile.

She gathers up the bubbles and blows them his way. "Care to join me?"

—

You better not be up to anything iffy—I'm coming in, Rebekah says.

"Rise and shine, you ungrateful troll," Rebekah calls as she nudges the door open with her shoulder. "I don't know _why_ you insis ton having these in be…"

Her fingers go slack and the tray slips: the glass shatters inches away from her toes and soaks her feet in orange juice and the daisies she'd picked flutter to the floor, but she grasps for the bowl of soup before it goes flying because Damon told her he had gone to great lengths to fix it—

(Meaning: he'd stormed into the hospital, grabbed Alaric by the back of his head and forced vampire blood down his throat to heal him—because seriously, ten days to get over a gunshot wound to the chest is just nine days too long—as Stefan finds out one day when he sees Alaric standing in the kitchen.

"Ric," Stefan says steadily, "is there a reason as to why you're wearing a flowered apron right now?"

Alaric looks up from the recipe book, flour smothered all over his chin. "Oh, hey Stefan. Damon pestered me into making French onion soup for his good buddy, or so he said." He scratches absently at his chin with a whisk. "We're out of those big onion things. Do you think Damon would mind if I used, I don't know… All we have is this Fudgelicious cake mix. Yeah, I think I'll just use th—" He stops, catching sight of Rebekah lingering just outside the door, her face stoic but her lips uncertain.

Alaric turns back to Stefan, bewildered. "Am I missing something here?")

—and sets it safely onto Kol's bedside table, flushed. And then she stomps out of the room.

"Kol!" she yells down the hall.

She screams into the kitchen, "Where are you?" but only ends up interrupting an apparently very serious discussion of chilli between Elena and Elijah. She snorts and turns her back on them, zooming through the sitting room and down another flight of stairs.

"You overgrown brat, get out here!" Kicking open the door of the den, she expects to find him drawing moustaches all over her pictures, but the room's empty.

She stands for a moment, still, before breaking out into a run.

Where could he be, he's had a concussion—the heels of her feet thud down on the hardwood floors as she throws the door of the coat closet open and grabs the first one she sees—he couldn't even blink properly yesterday—she does up her buttons haphazardly as she crashes out the front door—Stefan tried to _drain him of his blood_—she whips her head around, eyes wild, shouting out his name—did the idiot decide to just walk out of the house?—she flashes into the garage, blinking away the rain, but all his cars are still there—it's unsafe, _they're _unsafe—_Kol_, goddamnit Kol, _where are you_?

—

Stefan, that's _enough_, Elijah says.

"He bit—you bit hi—Stefan, what are you—" Rebekah has to stop then, because suddenly she's finding that it's getting harder and harder to talk. Something's catching in her throat and pressing down on her chest and hot things are pouring down her cheeks. She doubles over, choking on her own words until suddenly Elijah's face is swimming before her's. He's gripping her shoulders, shaking sense into her, saying something like "Rebekah, breathe. You need to _breathe_, Rebekah."

She sucks in a shuddering breath, and at the fire alighting in his eyes she exhales it, and when he nods, she takes another breath, pushes that out, sucks in another one. Repeats the process.

"Good, Bekah. Keep doing that," Elijah says soothingly, before turning back to Kol, tending to the two gaping holes in his neck. Stefan's backed against Ole Betsey, blood trickling down his chin. He looks completely aghast.

"I don't know what came over me," he says, staring down at his hands, stained with Kol's blood. He looks like he can't believe what he'd just done. He also looks like he wants to kiss the center of his palm. Lick the blood off his fingers one by one.

Rebekah shudders, and remembers what Elijah said. _Breathe_.

"Rebekah—" Stefan's reaching for her but she jerks away, shaking her head, no, don't touch me, you _bit _Kol, you _drank_ his blood, what is wrong with you, oh Stefan what happened, what is wrong with you—"What is _wrong_ with you?"

And she beats her fists, tiny compared to his, against his vast chest and starts in shock—she's over a thousand years older than him and should have knocked him to the ground, across the street, into mouth of the woods by now. But he's looking down at her, an incomprehensible look on his face, like her strikes are nothing more than a gentle breeze.

"He's not healing," Elijah says, and curses under his breath. "I have several theories, but we need the witch to confirm them. Stefan." He looks up at Stefan, a note of urgency in his voice. "Your wrist."

Rebekah looks from Elijah to Stefan to Kol, lying spreadeagled on the ground, face white as a sheet, then back to Elijah.

"No." The trembling starts again. _Breathe_, she reminds herself. "Kol can heal himself—Kol _will_ heal himself."

Her wide eyes venture back to Stefan, who holds her gaze, however weakly so. She glances at Elijah, who's still reaching for Stefan's wrist with his right hand, his left hand busy applying pressure to the ghastly red blotch on Kol's neck.

"…Won't he?" she asks, and neither of them answer.

The look Elijah gives her tells her everything she doesn't want to know.

—

It's pretty self-explanatory, Bonnie says.

"The spell Esther was casting was supposed to turn them into human." She casts Damon a hard look, but he's pretty used to it by now. "Until Damon conveniently cut it off."

"That's the thing," Elena speaks up from the back of the room. "It got cut off. What happened?"

Bonnie sighs in frustration. "I feel like we've already had this conversation. What does it matter, anyway? Either way, they're dying."

"_Yes_, but it would certainly help," Elijah says, his voice akin to the calm before a storm, "if the situation were clearer. I'd like to know what I'm walking into here."

Bonnie bites her lower lip, eyebrows coming together. "The spell is supposed to turn them—"

("And we would also appreciate it," Klaus say, raising his glass of whiskey lazily, "if you didn't talk as if we aren't in the room."

Bonnie ignores him.)

"—human, but it didn't get cut off. It's like I said before, it's slowly drawing the life out of them." But even then Bonnie pauses, running a hand across the Salvatores' mantelpiece. "I don't exactly know how, but it's slowly turning you human in the process."

"Slowly?" Elijah enquires.

"Some parts of you…" Bonnie grabs a letter opener and hurls it straight at Klaus' head, but his sharp reflexes get the better of the sharp blade. "Vampire."

Klaus curses, noting the way the blade vibrates as it's lodged in the wall. He reaches for it and presses his thumb against the sharp end. "And the other parts?"

All eyes turn to Klaus, who has as a trickle of red running down his thumb. It doesn't heal.

"Human," Elijah answers quietly.

—

We should talk about it, Caroline says.

"There's nothing to talk about." He looks over her shoulder, nose in her hair, and says, "A little more of the yellow, sweetheart."

"Seriously?" Caroline takes a step back and Klaus places his hand on the small of her back to stop her from walking into the jar of water behind her. "No way, that apple does _not_ have red in it." She turns to him and pokes his chest with the end of her paintbrush. "_You_ just want to be better than me."

Klaus smirks, going back to his own easel. "Suit yourself."

She narrows her eyes at him and sticks her tongue out—but when he's preoccupied with his own painting she surreptitiously dabs a few blobs of yellow onto the deformed mass of red that's supposed to be her pile of apples and blends it in. Surprisingly, it doesn't turn orange—it just turns that golden-red hue that she's been trying to copy off of Klaus for the past hour.

She blinks and adds a bit more, a dab of white when needed, peeking over her canvas at the bowl of apples every so often. The skirmish that had been her painting is kind of turning into something she'd show her grandmother and not blush, she thinks, and almost stabs a whole in her canvas when she paints onto it a navy background, flush with pride.

"I told you so," he breathes into her ear.

A shriek rips from her lips and she slashes her paintbrush across his face. "Boundaries, Klaus," she gasps. "You should be more careful. I could have like, stuck this in your throat or someth—"

"Alright, alright," Klaus says irritably and swipes off the yellow smear, turning away from her. He's pinching the bridge of his nose and she hears deep intakes of breaths every once in a while—he's still getting used to the fact that he has to breathe _regularly_ now.

Caroline wonders how one can adapt to such changes after a thousand years.

But when she thinks about it, the world has changed enough in the last thousand years. It's his turn.

—

I found the minced meat, Elijah says.

He steps into the room (but just so, his Italian shoes lingering by the doorframe as if to turn away at first notice) and he can't help his sharp tone when he asks, "What are you doing in here?"

Elena's finger freezes on the corner of the spell book and she turns around to face him, trying to stop the sheepish smile from creeping onto her lips. She takes a step closer, prays he doesn't hear the jump to her heart as she says, "I was just looking around. I've only been in here once."

Which is kind of true, if you don't factor in _why_ she's looking around in the first place.

"Esther's reading room," Elijah says shortly. "We don't spend much of our time here." He's looking at the burnt sage on the table, inches away from where Elena's fingers are resting. Dried and withered, and, now that she's really looking, notes that it's starting to collect dust.

"You haven't been in here at all, have you?" she asks, looking around the room, at how the curtains seem to hang limp and the golden glow of the lamps just whisper at the dark corners. "Not since that night?"

Elijah's already out of the room, hands in his pockets. "I see no reason to be."

Elena wants to say: "Well, I see plenty."—

but she swallows it down, brings a smile to her lips as she says instead: "Let's go make that chilli."

—

Locking yourself in your room isn't going to help, Damon says.

("And don't you dare grow another beard, either," Damon warns. "Remember last time? You fell asleep face first into a sandwich and ants started nesting in there.")

He's sitting on the floor outside Stefan's room, leaning against the door. Stefan's on the other side of the door, head tilted back to stare uselessly at the ceiling.

"I lost control, Damon," Stefan says. He sounds so hollow, and Damon resists the urge to kick the door down. Lets his brother stew it over. Gives his brother time.

Aren't we mature? he notes, taking an unnecessarily large gulp of his whiskey.

"We all do, every once in a while." Damon leans his head back, feels the smooth wood against his hair. "How were you supposed to know thousand year old _vampire _Kol was going to bleed a pint of of _human_ blood?"

Stefan doesn't answer.

Damon takes this as a sign to continue, "And you stopped. You realized what you were doing and you stopped when Elijah told you to. If that isn't progress, I don't know what is."

"And I'd really appreciate you opening the door," he says.

"It's kind of weird talking to you through it," he says.

"Like we're in an angsty montage of scenes in High School Musical," he says.

Stefan still doesn't answer. Damon swallows his groan (and swallows his liquor instead), fully prepared for an uncomfortable night of throwing Ghandi quotes at Stefan and numbing his ass from sitting in the same position for over five hours now.

This is worse than those tweens waiting out a Bieber concert, he thinks.

He's about to start humming that unfortunately catchy Baby baby baby oh song, but his trail of thought is (thankfully) cut short when he finds himself tumbling backwards onto the floor, staring up at the beginnings of a five o'clock shadow on Stefan's chin.

"Took you long enough," Damon grumbles.

Stefan reaches for his brother, helps him up, but he's the one to say "Thank you."

—

You're still deflecting, she says.

Caroline's painting stars in the corner of her canvas. Klaus has long given up on molding (or trying to, at any rate) her painting prowess—

("Caroline, there's no such thing as _purple_ horses…"

"I—whatever, you were hogging the brown, okay?"

"…could have just asked, or at the very least used any other colour—"

"What, are you going to tell me how to hold my paintbrush now?"

"Yes, actually. You're holding it too close to the—"

"Leave me alone, Klaus.")

—resolving to just let her be. When she draws a smile onto her smile, he chuckles and looks away, when she dots the back of his shirt with multicoloured polka dots he just shakes his head and squirts red onto her cheeks instead.

"Deflecting what, the fact that I'm slowly turning into something that seems absolutely foreign to me?" Klaus asks calmly, but the streaks on his canvas are stark and vicious. "Or the fact that I have twenty days left to live?" He casts the brush aside and it hits the newspapers covering her carpet with a thud, and she washes it roll away twice before stopping.

He walks towards her and his hand hovers centimetres away from her cheeks. She tries not to lean into it.

"I appreciate your _peering into my soul_ or whatever you choose to call it," Klaus says, "but I'd rather just take it day by day."

Caroline swallows, pulling her face away from his fingertips. "What happened to the Klaus who always had a backup plan for, I don't know, just about everything?"

"Can't exactly have a backup plan when you have no plans," he says, his breath—warm now, she realizes. So very warm—tickling her cheeks. "Let's talk about how you're not so innocent yourself, love."

Her throat feels dry. "What do you mean?"

His breath is trailing down to her cheeks now.

"I kissed you yesterday," he says.

"And you kissed me back," he says.

She takes a step back, but all he does is follow. She's not one to back away—she knows it, he knows it. Klaus' eyes narrow. "Why'd you do it? Pity for the dead man walking?"

She gives no answer, so he continues: "Oh how the mighty have fallen, right? Klaus of the ages beaten and battered down to the level of those he used to walk all over."

"Klaus—"

"I don't _need_ your sympathy," Klaus hisses through his teeth. "I don't need your compassion, and I don't need your pity."

It's funny, how they're standing nose to nose, his eyes bearing into hers: his underscored with a quiet anger and hers speaking volumes of _Are you for serious_?

"Are you done?" she asks, rolling her eyes. He tilts his head slightly, something like shock flicking across his eyes. "Good. I'm not here because I pity you, alright? I'm here because I want to be." She takes a step closer, so he sees nothing but the blue of her eyes, nothing but the truth in there. "I'm here because, while you don't need my sympathy, you need me."

Klaus looks like he's about to argue, but she silences him with a jab of her paintbrush to his cheek. "You need me. Berate that all you want, but you do. Now pass the red, you're hogging the damned paint again."

And Klaus does, but not without pointing out her apples are beyond saving. He paints over them and she doesn't say a word, just runs a hand down his back, like a silent promise of _I'm not going anywhere._

—

I'm over here, Bekah, Kol says.

She whirls around to find him in the garden, hand outstretched to cup the rain with his palm. She almost wants to giggle at the bandages wrapped around his head—

("You're not going to be pussywhipped into just _any_ typical bandage wrap, my friend," Damon had said, rubbing his palms together. "Yours will be refined, one of its kind, superior in every which way and ultimately—_you_."

Which is how he ends up fashioning the bandages into a turban for Kol.)

—but doesn't when she notices he's in nothing but a t-shirt and his pajama bottoms. She grips her arms, hugs her coat to her torso closer. "What are you doing out here?"

"I was looking for our dear brothers, but the house is empty." He's still looking up at the sky. "Where _are_ our dear brothers?"

Rebekah steps closer, hesitant. "Nik's at Caroline's house. Eli's _cooking_ with _Elena_," she practically spits. "Come away from the rain, you'll ruin your bandages."

"I'll be fine," Kol replies. "Damon's got it wrapped up like a tank."

"Come back inside, anyway. It's cold."

Kol looks at her then, raindrops still falling down on his fingertips, a grin on his face. "Exactly, Bek. It's _cold_."

Rebekah doesn't know how—maybe it's the way he's smiling, or how good the grass feels against her bare feet—but she's suddenly beside her brother with her coat shed, grinning up at the rain. She wants to say how good it feels, the cold on her cheeks and thee wetness in her hair, turns to him to match his smiles, but she slips and grips his hand and he's going down with her, and they slip and slide in the mud, rolling around and fisting at each other's hair and pulling at each other's shoulders: yelling, kicking, laughing.

She slaps his wrist away and swipes at the hair in her eyes. "This reminds me of… Doesn't it feel like—?"

Kol smashes some mud into her mouth, and she splutters and coughs, her sentence cutting short. She looks like she's about to strike him like she did yesterday, but her fist falls to her side when he smiles softly and says: "I know."

—

You have something on your mind, Elijah says.

The knife she's using to chop up the tomatoes stills, but only for a beat. "Why would you think that?" she asks, and leans over the knife drawer, her hair falling in dark curtains around her face, masking her carefully averted eyes.

"I can still hear your heartbeat," Elijah says evenly, stirring the pot bubbling away on the stove. "It's not jumping, nor is it racing away like it does when you're happy."

"It's not as steady as it is when you're sad," he says.

"Your heart beats irregularly, even in the most mundane of situations," he says.

"But today, you've been cautious. Your heartbeat too constant. Almost as if it's too..." He looks at her, runs his eyes leisurely from her feet up to her waist, to her hair flowing over her shoulders, and then finally, her face.

Her knife almost slips, and she grips it tighter, knuckles whitened.

"...slow," he finishes.

She doesn't know how she's going to unlock her throat. She looks down at the tomatoes, scrapes it into a pile with the knife, starts to take a deep breath but then berates herself for trying to breathe normally—trying to breathe normally?—and finds herself at a loss of what to do. At last, she takes a breath and manages to say, "You've done your homework."

"I just listen," Elijah says genially. "Switch?"

"Y-yeah," Elena says, setting her knife down. "Bring the pot here, would you?"

She turns the exact moment he does—they're stuck in the same position as they are yesterday, warm breath mingling in the stillness of the kitchen, her hands against his chest and his eyes locked onto hers.

"Lucky I put the knife down," she tries to joke, but he's not laughing. He looks like a man with the weight of the world on his shoulders, like a man about to make a decision.

Apparently he's made it.

Elijah grips the handles and is about to set it down on the counter, about to turn back to her, when a blank look crosses his face—suddenly the pot slips from his hand and crashes to the floor, splattering red all over his suit and all over her sweater. Elena gasps as the scalding sauce comes in contact with her skin, and she runs to the sink, turns the taps.

Elijah's beside her now, soaking up a rag and presses it to all the spots she can't reach, disregarding the redness of his own skin. He's still blinking in that dazed sort of way, and Elena marvels at how he's so quick to act even when his mind is elsewhere.

The screaming in her skin stops, and she slumps back against the sink, sauce on her cheeks. "What happened?"

It takes him a while to answer. His hands moves like he wants to raise it, but he doesn't. "Nothing."

—

I've gotten used to it, Rebekah says.

Sometimes they'll be sitting down to a meal—which Elijah cooks, because for some reason he's always willingly in the kitchen, all domesticated rainbow bliss with _Elena_—or listening to Rebekah read the Hunger Games aloud while staring out her window, and he'll suddenly set down his cutlery, or be so still she's sure he'll topple over, static and wooden.

He'll look at her when she calls his name, that strange look on his face, and she'll ask: "You felt it again, didn't you?"

"Yes," he says, but when she puts her hands to his chest, guided by his slightly shaking fingers, she feels nothing.

—

We're going to catch pneumonia, Kol says.

Rebekah notes the glee in his tone and makes another mud angel, as she has taken to calling the number of human-shaped patches dotting their garden. "You're the one who wanted to stay out here."

Kol shrugs, looking like a swamp thing rising from the core of the earth. "The mud's starting to get into my boxers. It's not a particularly nice feeling."

"Be a man about it, Kol." Rebekah sticks her tongue out, tastes the rain. "How's your head?"

"Better." Remarkably, his turban is the only thing about him that's not stained with mud. Rebekah doesn't know what kind of witchcraft Damon had been up to when he'd said, "This isn't your typical bandage wrap—it's a _Damon_-_approved_ bandage wrap."

"I'd say sorry, but it was all your own fault."

Kol sighs. "I know." He turns to her, lips set in a straight line. "Don't do that again."

"Do what?"

His lip twists like he'd just swallowed a very bitter lemon. "Leave me behind."

"Kol," Rebekah says firmly, "you're my brother. Even if this curse doesn't kill us, I'd probably end up sticking a dagger in you myself. But even then I'd probably lug your ungrateful self around with me, wherever I go."

She sits up, slipping a little in the process. "Always and forever, remember?"

Rebekah reaches a hand out.

Kol takes it.

—

How the hell did this happen, Damon says.

"I don't really know," Stefan answers and changes to another channel. "The Notebook's on."

Damon sits up straighter, sucking away at his blood bag like it's a juice box. "Want one?"

Stefan's lip curls. "O positive," he says reluctantly anyway.

They watch Noah sweep Allie to his chest and press kiss after kiss on her lips in the pouring rain.

Damon laughs lightly. "I've lost track of how many times we've watched this."

Stefan sets his barely-sipped-from blood bag aside, saving the rest for later. "I haven't. Fifty nine times, brother."

"See, this is why the chicks dig you." Damon kicks his shoes off and rests them on the coffee table. "You remember this shit."

Stefan just watches the movie, fingers resting lightly on the remote control. Damon doesn't know which one's louder—the rain banging against the window, the rain from the movie, or Stefan's silence.

"You can't avoid her forever, you know."

Stefan's jaw twitches. "I'm not avoiding anyone."

"Then why are you here?" Damon grabs the remote control to shut the movie off. A first. "That's got to mean something."

"Doesn't have to mean anything."

"Oh, Stefan," Damon chuckles. "Stefan, Stefan, Stefan. With you, it always means something."

The rain falls on.

—

Elijah, Elena says.

"Elena."

He's crouched on her windowsill with clouds in his eyes. She gives up on pulling her mess of a hair into a ponytail and lets it fall back down her shoulders in chocolate waves. "What are you—?"

Elijah walks up to her in two great strides, and before she can protest he's already pressing her against his chest, buried in his designer jacket, breathing him in. Just like yesterday, just like in the kitchen, but made different because it's completely warranted and intentional.

He's staring down at her almost expectantly, and she just blinks back. "Elijah—"

"Listen," he says, and there's something about his voice that makes her throat catch.

So she closes her eyes and leans into him, and it's then that she hears it—the steady rhythm of a heartbeat pulsing away, almost like a song.

She's so startled she forgets to step back when she looks up at him again. "Your heart—"

"It comes and it goes," he says, a rare smile breaking out onto his face. "I've been feeling it sporadically throughout the day, but then I realized... it's you. It jumps when you're around."

Elena doesn't quite know what to say to that, but he's looking at her with that same piercing look, right before he dropped the pot of chilli in the kitchen.

He brushes her hair away from her cheeks. "Elena."

"Yes?" she asks, her voice higher than it should be.

"You have minced meat in your hair."

"Oh," is all she can think to say, heat creeping up her neck. She pats her hair, blinks dazedly. "I should—I should go get cleaned up."

"I'll wait," Elijah says.

—

Somehow I knew it would end this way, Klaus says.

They end up painting a section of her wall, him recreating Manet's post-impressionism works with just the tips of his fingers and her drawing stick figures on pink horses at best. He starts painting the night-time sky on her ceiling, mostly just to show off, and she presses her hands flat against the back of his shirt in retaliation.

He tries to do the same but she's too fast for him (something he still finds unbelievable), so her clothes end up dotted and smudged with his fingerprints, but never his whole hands.

When she steps back to admire his 'work' in the mirror, she sends him a smile that shines through the rainy day. "I'll keep this forever," she promises.

"You have forever," he assures her, and paints stars on her ceiling.

Caroline winds up lying flat on her back on her carpet, laughing up at the universe he's created for her right in her room. When her laughter gives way to slow breathing, and the weak sunlight gives way to the evening glow, she sits up, hands stained and cheeks painted with red.

She pulls her tousled hair into a bun and perches on the corner of her bed, watching as he paints the pale yellow of her room away with his hands.

"Is it cold today?" Caroline asks quietly, fingers knotted in her lap. "I can't tell. Is it cold?"

Klaus shrugs. "It's alright."

Caroline takes in a breath. "Nice day for a bubble bath."

"Sorry?"

"One of the things I loved most about being human, she says slowly. "Bubble baths on rainy days."

Klaus' hand stills. "I... can't remember the last time I had one."

"That's a shame," Caroline says, stretching lazily. She makes her way across her room, saying in his ear as she passes, "I think I'll have one now, since I'm all dirty from painting."

"You don't have to wait up for me," she says demurely to his frozen back, and slips into her bathroom.

—

Her porcelain skin shines in the glow of the room lent by the flickering candles. The scent permeating the room seems to center and float around her, and he can feel the warmth of the water from where he's standing.

Elena looks up at him from beneath her eyelashes, doe-eyed and inviting. "Well?"

Elijah loosens his tie.

.

.

.

**tbc**

.

.

.

.


	8. up and up we keep on climbing

SO I FINALLY PASSED MY ROAD TEST. YAY. And in other news... DJ hasn't updated 'for here live none but the sly' and my life is empty without it. Smack her with a review and tell her she's ruining my life, plz k thx.

This chapter was a bitch to write, I'm so so so sorry for the delay. :( I was supposed to send this in to my beta, but I guess I was too impatient :p Mistakes are all mine, feel free to point them out to me.

P/S: Chapter one continuity! See if you can spot it

—

**put down your sword and crown**

.

**viii**  
>but i feel alive, oh, i feel it in me<br>up and up we keep on climbing

—

It's Thursday.

Caroline is late.

For the first time in seven years—when she would watch old movies with daddy late into the night and wake up to Liz quite literally dragging her out of bed—Caroline finds herself kicking off her sheets in a mad frenzy, reaching for her phone to silence the belated alarm all the while cursing the state of her hair.

She's this close to just hurling her phone against her freshly painted wall in despair—because _hello_, it's 8:43am!—and is dashing about her room, grabbing at her towel and seriously the sub filling in for Ric has a stick up his ass when it comes to second period History and where are her skinny jeans and what the hell why didn't her BlackBerry ring sooner and _what_ is her scarf doing under the—_whoops —_she finds herself tripping and crashing face first into a pile of throw pillows.

"Good morning to you too," Klaus says, his voice rumbling against her stomach. Caroline feels a flush coming on from the feel of his lips through the thin cotton of her pajamas, but all thought of it is (thankfully) forgotten when her phone beeps again—8:45.

_Motherf—_Caroline scrambles to get to her feet (to get off of Klaus), but doesn't get far since she finds herself falling all over again when he grabs her ankle.

"You're making me late!" she snarls, kicking at his face. Klaus deflects them easily.

"You made me spend the night on the floor," he says placidly, like that alone justifies what he's about to do next—rolling over so he's on top of her, pinning her on top of the many layers of blankets and plush bears she'd thrown down for him last night.

"I hope you're comfortable," she had said, tone saccharine, as peeked over the edge of her bed to look down on him. Klaus had looked like a sulky child told to go to bed early, the way his face was tucked in between Mr Bear and Mr Caroline (her mother wasn't exactly the most _inspiring _of people when it came to naming her toys).

"Very," he grumbles, and she thinks it funny, this total one-eighty of emotions, because when she'd finally emerged from her bathroom earlier, he had been sitting in the armchair in the corner of her room, flipping through her copy of _The Myth of Sisyphus_. With his casual position and his trained eyes, she would have thought him unaffected by the smell of lavender that wafted around her every step, but when she peeked at him over her shoulder, he was gripping the book so tight his knuckles had turned white.

Caroline wants to push him off, but he's surprisingly heavy for a hy—_human_, she corrects herself—for a human. She thinks it must be especially cold today, because Mom has the thermostat jacked way up, and Klaus' cheeks have a rosy hue to them.

_English boy with the lacrosse stick, _she remembers her cousin DJ chanting, wayward even in their tween years. _His rosy cheeks I'd like to lick_, she recalls with the smallest of blushes, and promptly snickers in his face.

Klaus scowls, lifting himself off of her. "What?" he snaps.

"Oh, nothing," Caroline says airily, wriggling free of his feet trapping her against the blankets, even as DJ sings away from the corner of her mind, _English boy with the northern eyes, kiss my lips_—she blushes—_then kiss the skies_. "I have to get ready." She glances at her mirror and groans at the way her hair sticks up everywhere. "Does this look salvageable to you?"

But Klaus isn't paying attention anymore. He's frowning down at his phone, muttering something under his breath that even her ears can't pick up. She stays rooted at the spot, wondering if it would be rude of her to just, you know, _run off_, but he's in a world of his own and she doubts he'd notice if she suddenly screamed or maybe fell out the window or drowned in plush bears or—

"You have fun at school," Klaus says suddenly, finally looking up at her. "I have things to do today, anyway."

And then he's on his feet, paint-splattered jacket already in hand as he walks out the door with his half-assed goodbye. Caroline blinks in the sudden stillness of her room.

—

It's (still) Thursday.

Elena is frenetic.

"Matt—hey, Matt!"

Matt whirls around, eyes wild, hands behind his back. "I'm not eating the glue again!" he bursts out, before realizing _oh_, it's not Caroline. He clears his throat and leans back against his locker, the picture of nonchalance. "Hey 'Lena. What's up?"

Elena hitches the strap of her bag onto her shoulder. "Have you seen Bonnie? Caroline says she's supposed to be working on the posters in the library, but she's not there."

"Bonnie?" Matt frowns, tilting his head to the left, as he does when he's thinking. "Oh yeah, she told me she had to rush home or something. Abby stuff." He gives her a tight smile. "Is it like, super important? Because she might still be here. She just left."

Elena all but melts with relief. "Thanks, Matt. I gotta go." She starts to break into a run, but at the last minute, turns back and gestures at the face. "And, uh—you've got a little… just there."

Matt takes a furtive swipe at the glue in the corner of his lips, muttering defensively under his breath as Elena makes her way down the hall and shoulders the doors open. The parking lot's empty—it _is_ third period, after all—but she spots the red of Bonnie's favourite jumper and all but tramples down the stone steps, yelling for her.

Bonnie stops, car keys slung around her fingers. There's a deep line between her eyebrows. "Yeah?"

Elena's slightly out of breath, and leans against the hood of Bonnie's car to catch it. "Do you know anything about Esther's grimoires?"

Bonnie's frown deepens, if possible. "What's this about, Elena?"

"Just—" Elena takes a deep breath, her nails digging into her upper arms. "Please."

"I know that some of the stuff in there dates back to the origins of witchcraft," Bonnie sighs. "Really old magic; dark magic. Things that would take me years, decades even, to master."

Elena feels her heart sink down to her stomach. "Esther's grimoires are still in her reading room." She unwraps her arms from around her torso and plays with the hem of her sweater, unable to look Bonnie in the eye. "I… was looking through them yesterday."

It's good that Elena's looked away, because Bonnie's eyes are sharp enough to cut through bricks. "Why would you do that?"

Elena pauses. She can't exactly _tell _Bonnie, can she? Not when Bonnie's still so very stung by what had happened to Abby. She looks at her best friend; wants to wrap her arms around her. But she can't, so all she does is bite her lips and look away. "I'm just… looking into something. But I can't really understand it, it's written…" Elena screws her eyes shut, tries to remember what Alaric had told her once, "in Futhark Runes. But there were other symbols too, and I thought you'd understand them, because I sure don—"

"_Why_ would you need to understand it?" Bonnie's frowns _further_. Elena feels panic rising in her chest as she practically _sees_ the cogs turning in her head.

Bonnie's eyes widen. "No."

"It's not what it looks like—"

"No, it's exactly what it looks like," Bonnie snaps, taking a step back. "I can't believe you, Elena."

"Bonnie—"

The witch just shakes her head, jerking her hand away when Elena reaches for it. "I have to go. Abby needs me, because she was the one who had to _die_ to protect your precious Original friends."

She yanks her car door open and doesn't even spare a glance Elena's way as she slams down on the gas and out of the school compound, her tires screeching the whole way.

Elena's left in the parking lot, ashen. One step forward, two steps back, she thinks.

—

It's Thursday (and it's dragging on).

Caroline is annoyed.

"I'm not _counting _or anything," Caroline says testily, tapping her calligraphy pen against the table, "but that's the third time you've sighed in five minutes."

Not that she cares or anything, because as far as she knows, there's no law that states one can't sigh in stages of melancholia. Elena's practically _entitled _to sighing three, four, five (and the droop of the brunette's shoulders makes six) times in five minutes if she wants.

Caroline's a good friend; she lets it slide—but she's not a good enough friend to let Elena sigh their free period away, _totally _disregarding the invitations she's supposed to hand-write—

("_Hand-write_?" Damon splutters, looking down at the stack of stiff, speckled paper and the numerous calligraphy pens Caroline had borrowed from Klaus (read: swiped from his drawer while he wasn't looking).

"Why the hell," Damon continues, "would you want to handwrite two-hundred and sixty two—_two hundred and sixty-two_—prom invitations when, _oh_ I don't know, printing presses exist?"

"I like the sentimentality of it all!" Caroline retorts, brandishing an envelope in his face and threatening to paper cut anyone within a three-feet radius of her. "What are you doing here, anyway? You don't even _go_ here.")

—for prom. So Elena can sigh all she wants. Just not with their prom—_her_ prom—at stake, and Caroline tells her as much.

"Look , I'm sorry—no offense or anything," Elena says, and tries to subtly word her response. "But don't you think this is a complete waste of our time?"

"You said it, sister," Damon grumbles, flexing his sore, ink-stained fingers.

As soon as the words leave her mouth, Elena immediately regrets it. Caroline seems to be swelling up, her face flushing and her eyes shining and it's all levels of creepy, especially with the emotions flitting past her face faster than Damon can file nails—which is pretty fast, judging from the way he's pushed his pens aside and is deftly filing Stefan's nails now, since apparently the younger Salvatore had decided to go all hipster on them and forego showering—

( "Stefan?" Elena begins hesitantly, cautiously. I'm not sure, but I think there's a… mushroom in your beard." She pauses, letting this sink in, but Stefan just stares back blankly.

"Did you kn—?"

"He knows," Damon says primly, blowing on Stefan's nails.)

—and had just given up all free will to Damon, who had been grooming and dressing him for the past few days. Which would explain the neon green t-shirt from the 60s and electric-blue skinny jeans.

Anyway.

After shock, betrayal, rage, hurt and numerous other emotions (of which Elena's lost count) flashes across her eyes, Caroline finally settles for _scandalized_. "Elena Gilbert, are you… _intentionally trying to ruin my prom?"_

"Woah, Care—that's not what I meant. Not at all!" Elena glances at the Salvatores for support, but they've conveniently looked away.

"Elena," Caroline says again, but with considerable calmness (she doesn't look like she wants to set her hair—or her _own_ hair—on fire, at the very least).

Elena holds her breath.

"Walk with me," Caroline finishes, pushing back her chair and looking expectantly at her best friend.

Well then.

—

It's Thursday (and it's only just beginning).

Rebekah is impatient.

She checks her phone, pulling her finger down the screen again and again to refresh her inbox, and doesn't stop pacing the room. Every so often she sneaks peeks into the den where Kol was sulking about how the doctors at the hospital had told him not to get into any strenuous activities (read: no more driving lessons with Rebekah).

The den is really the modest way of calling their state of the art black-walled theatre with the plush remote-controlled chairs complete with in-built massagers. Fibre optic lights blinked down from the dark ceiling in flashes of turquoise, fuchsia and gold, making her feel like she's caught in another world, not cold and dismal Mystic Falls.

On the rare occasions where Kol didn't monopolize the room—he'd garnered an unfortunate liking to the dark storylines and flashy cars that was a Christopher Nolan flick—Elijah liked to sit in solitude and watch his black and white Tati films. Finn, on his short stay here, was fascinated not by the screen that ran from floor to ceiling, but by the long line of snack dispensers and adequately-stocked mini-bar in the corner of the room (Kol had insisted). Rebekah would sneak into the den in the dead of the night and slip in those old Disney movies, the ones Caroline had lent her and she'd kept hidden under her pillow for fear Klaus (or worse: _Kol_) would find them.

Klaus just liked to sit there with a crystal glass of whiskey, and stew.

They're never in that room at the same time. Rebekah's never stopped to consider why.

When it's clear no messages are going to be coming in anytime soon, she lets out a breath of frustration and stamps into the den. "What are you watching?" she snaps at Kol. She flicks her eyes over to the screen—

and promptly shrieks.

"_Where did you get these_?" comes her shrill voice as she rushes over to the control centre, trying to figure out which of the numerous buttons would eject the CD. Kol continues munching on his popcorn, watching her from the corner of his eyes with disinterest as Aurora twirls around in her forest, singing of true love and her missing prince.

"Hah!" she yells out triumphantly as she all but claws the disc out of 'sliding thing', as she's called it, but her face falls in dismay as the film keeps playing.

"I've got it recorded," Kol says, a hint of a smirk on his lips, "Sixty-two times." He reaches for the remote and turns the volume up louder. "Who knew my volatile sister was so fond of fairytales?" he yells over the noise.

"You _lummox_." Rebekah slams her fist against the panel but all it does is turn the images on the screen brighter. She rounds on Kol, wants to pummel his face, has half a mind to yank his turban off, but before she can, Kol shakes a large container of—something—under her nose.

She smells flour and processed cheese and twists her head away, grimacing. "What is that?"

"Cheese puffs," Kol says thickly, spraying orange dust all over her pristine... new... _white_ shirt-dress.

Rebekah screws her eyes shut and counts silently to ten, shoving white hot rage in the form of a mirthless scream back down her throat. She _really _considers just yanking that _stupid_ turban off his _stupid_ head (or shove those _stupid_ cheese puffs up his _stupid_ nose), but a rustling from the darkened corner of the room catches her attention.

No, not a rustling, she realizes—a _sniffling_. She glances at Kol, but he seems unperturbed; wrapped up in his film. She wades through Kol's snack to the corner of the room and reaches a hand out to touch the darkness, and something pounds in her chest, and for a while she stays rooted to her spot because the feeling is so odd, so _foreign_, that she forgets to breathe sometimes.

_Rebekah_, she'll hear Elijah in the back of her mind, and sucks in her breath.

Which is good that she does, really. All the better to scream when something big and heavy and shaggy leaps from the darkness right at her face.

"Kol!" she screams, writhing on the floor as hot and wet and sticky breaths start slapping at her cheeks. "Kol! The time has come; the curse is upon us—I'm dyi… _Kol!_"

"Shut up, will you?" Kol snaps, stuffing a handful of chips into his face, watching the Prince swoon at the sight of Aurora. "I'm at the best part."

"_Motherf_—" Rebekah struggles for a while, feels something biting at her nose and slams her fists into her attacker, and she hears a yelp of pain. She immediately snaps her eyes open to find… a dog?

"I—" Rebekah blinks up at the furry thing panting above her, at a loss for words. She sits up and gathers the dog into her arms, burrowing her nose into his soft fur. "Kol, what is this?"

"It's a _dog_, Bekah." The roll of his eyes just scream _Bitch, please_ and Rebekah immediately resents Caroline for all those episodes of the Real Housewives that she watches with him to unwind (because he usually—or used to—end up bruised and battered with tire marks printed on the back of his shirts) after a long day of driving lessons.

"I know it's a dog," she snaps, tightening her grip around the pet as she trots over to the seat beside Kol, plopping down into it. "Why is it here?"

"Its _name_ is Amelia," Kol snaps back, tearing his eye away from the film long enough to throw her an annoyed glance. As he turns back to the screen, he says absently, "Got her for you."

Rebekah frowns further, scratching the dog—_Amelia_—behind the ears. It licks her hand eagerly. "Why?"

"For the love of—_I am trying to watch this film, Bekah_." Kol throws his hands up in frustration and all but punches the pause button on the remote control. The prince and Aurora hover where they are, lips just a whisper away from a kiss. He sighs, running a hand through his hair. "Didn't you always want one?"

She just throws an equally-as-grievanced look back at him. Yes, she'd wanted a pet, but ninety _years _ago. Back when she had skipped home to find Klaus back from the barracks, safe and unscathed (of course) and had cheerfully demanded a puppy. Klaus had tried all sorts of tactics to talk her out of it like "Aren't you too _old_ for pets?" (condescension), "Isn't Kol trouble enough?" (distraction), "Kol accidentally stabbed himself in the eye, can we take a rain check on that?" (Kol so hadn't, though—Klaus had stabbed it for him).

Undaunted, Rebekah had gone out to buy one herself. She kicked the front door open and dropped the puppy—the most adorable little Beagle she'd set her eyes on—into Elijah's lap, her face alighting with triumph at the expressions (Kol: surprise; Klaus: dismay) on her brothers' faces.

They must be _sorely_ disappointed that they couldn't pilfer this moment of hers, she'd thought as she went to bed with the Beagle (she hadn't figured out a name for it yet) snuggled into her underarm.

Elijah bought her a book of names the next day, although rather reluctantly—she saw it in his eyes as he handed it to her. Before he left the room he had looked her in the eye and said, "Remember what we are, Rebekah—don't get too attached."

She looked at the Beagle, frowning. The Beagle looked like it had a lot of years in it, not likely to _die_ anytime soon. She snorted, settling into a night with a glass of Château Margaux and a burning drive for name-hunting.

Kol had offered his help, but she's told him no in a much _ruder_ fashion, and he stalked off in a huff, telling her she'd be sorry. She went to sleep with the book hanging loose from her fingers are still no name for the Beagle.

Of course, she should have known Elijah wasn't talking about the Beagle's life span. Should've known that the dismay on Klaus' face wasn't because she'd gotten what she'd wanted, _again_.

Because the next day, Elijah has to hold her as she cries into his shoulder, the Beagle in her arms, not a drop of blood left in its limp body. Klaus sighs resignedly and drains about two bottles of Bourbon before stepping out of the room. Rebekah would have gladly kicked Kol off their ten-story apartment to leave him with injuries that would take ten years to heal properly, maybe even withhold from talking to him longer than that, had Klaus not daggered him first.

The three remaining Originals never mentioned either incident again.

Rebekah peeks suspiciously over Amelia's nose at Kol, but he has his eyes glued determinedly at the paused film.

"You're not going to eat her, are you?" she asks (almost accusingly).

Kol gives his cheese puffs a pointed shake. "For some reason these processed things taste better than blood now."

Rebekah slumps back against her seat, burrowing her face into Amelia—not _the_ _Labrador_, or _the dog that didn't have a name_—and says quietly, "Alright."

Kol looks at her, eyebrows furrowed. Alright, as in _Alright_?

Alright, as in _Thank you_?

Alright, as in _I forgive you_?

Rebekah straightens up, and says (louder this time): "Alright."

So Kol just smiles back, "Alright." Because since when do small gestures need big explanations anyway?

"Isn't this touching."

Kol and Rebekah whip their heads around to see Klaus standing just inside the room, a knowing smirk on his face.

"How long have you been standing there?" Kol asks, letting the film play once again.

"Long enough." Klaus gives Amelia a onceover as he walks down the steps to where they're sitting. He has an exasperated look on his face as he pulls his phone out of his pocket.

"Fifty-three messages, Bekah," he snarls, thrusting the phone in her face. "This better be important."

Amelia chooses that exact moment to jump out of Rebekah's arms to throttle Klaus to the ground.

—

It's Thursday (and it's not going to end anytime soon).

Caroline is exultant.

"So spill," Caroline says as they pull down those prank-posters of RIDICULOUSLY PHOTOGENIC GUY FOR PROM KING and put up the _real_ posters. It takes Elena a while to respond because she's been twisting her fingers into the hem of her sweater the whole twenty minutes that Caroline had been silent, wondering if "walk with me" was actually code for You're being kicked off the prom committee (_or worse_), There wasn't actually a prom committee to begin with, but you're still being kicked off.

"Huh?" Elena says, as intelligently as she is able to.

Caroline rolls her eyes, balling up the rest of the posters and using her boots to scuff them into a neat pile at her feet. "You've obviously got something on your mind."

Elena sighs, resting her forehead against the worn corkboard. "It's not a big—it's nothing, really."

"So _spill_," Caroline insists, pulling up a chair and folding herself into it. She nudges another chair closer to Elena with the heel of her boot as an impish smile grows on her lips. "If it's _nothing, really_."

There's a blush creeping up Elena's neck, which she tries her hardest hide by looking down at her feet, her hair swishing across her cheeks. She peeks at Caroline through her eyelashes. Caroline's still sitting there, ever patient.

"Fine," Elena sighs, slipping into the chair as well. Their ankles knock together, and Caroline jiggles her foot in encouragement.

"Something…" Elena begins, but has to clear her throat before she can go on. Her hands feel clammy all of a sudden, and she wraps them inside the folds of her sweater. "Something happened between me and Elijah," Elena finally admits, chagrined. She pauses, waiting for Caroline to say something, but highly doubts it's going to come anytime soon—

(Because there it is. The power combo. Caroline winces, but Elena's not sure if it's because _something so totally happened between her and Elijah and it wasn't exactly beyond her control, _or the poor grammar of her sentence.

From the way Caroline's eye keeps twitching to the shelves where all the Longmans and Websters are, Elena's guessing it's the latter.)

—because she can hardly believe it herself.

Finally, Caroline says, "You slept with him, didn't you." so matter-of-factly, that Elena's taken aback.

And also shrill in her defence.

"Wha—_no,_" Elena splutters, nearly sliding off her chair, her cheeks flaring crimson. "Not like that. Nothing even happe—we didn't even kiss, it's just…" She covers her face with her hands. "Something happened. Let's just leave it at that." Again, she peeks at Caroline, but this time through her fingers. "You're so calm about this."

Caroline shrugs. "I kissed Klaus."

Fair enough.

"Is that it, then?" Caroline asks, uncrossing her legs and preparing to stand, but Elena shakes her head, looking absolutely miserably. Caroline lets out a breath. "Oh, 'Lena. What's wrong?"

"I was in Esther's reading room the other day," Elena says, her fingers twisting together. "Just looking around, and Elijah—well, he found me before I could really… I don't know, _find_ anything."

"Why would you need to 'find' anything?" Caroline air-quotes, narrowing her eyes. "Elena—"

"I need your help," Elena presses. "I wouldn't ask this normally, but… I've got a hunch, alright? I need that grimoire, Care." She leans forward to grasp Caroline's hands in her own. "Please."

Caroline's looking at her so _disapprovingly_ that Elena almost winces, but she holds her ground.

After a while, Caroline relents. "What do you need me to do?"

Elena bites her lip, an apologetic look on her face. "Distract Elijah."

Because, _duh_.

—

It's Thursday (just scraping the edges of mid-morning).

Klaus is worn out.

The brakes, Rebekah, Klaus snaps.

Are you blind? Did you not see that red li—just—just _drive_, Rebekah, Klaus snarls.

What the fu—_is that another one of my hubcaps rolling down the street_? Klaus cries.

What did I say about the _brakes_, Rebekah? Klaus barks.

Rebekah finds her feet fumbling under Klaus' unyielding gaze, and Ole Betsey lurches forward before coming to a screeching halt. "If I'd known you'd be such an arse about this, I would have asked Eli for lessons instead," she snaps at Klaus, she snaps at Klaus, whipping off her scarf to strangle him with it. "And stop yelling at me!"

"Stop being such a horrible driver," he growls back, deflecting her assault with a sweater-clad arm that is peppered with stray dog hairs that glint in the sun. He finds himself vaguely regretting his remark when Rebekah deflates visibly.

"You think I'm a horrible driver?"

Klaus doesn't answer, just pinches the bridge of his nose.

"Nik?" Rebekah prompts, but all Klaus does is unbuckle his seatbelt.

"Switch with me," he says.

—

(Klaus still can't believe) it's Thursday.

Rebekah is glum.

"Where are we going?" Rebekah asks sulkily from exile to the passenger seat. She flips her sunglasses to the top of her head, looking around at the wide streets dotted with seemingly random potholes and cardboard cut-outs of pedestrians walking their dogs. She is instantly reminded of Amelia, which cheers her up some, but Klaus' stoic silence is still eating away at her.

"Nik," she says again, "I demand to know—"

"All in due time, Rebekah," Klaus says, resisting the strong urge to roll his eyes. "Shut up for a bit."

They drive on and Klaus makes a turning. They're greeted by tall wrought-iron gates that remind Rebekah eerily of the town's cemetery. Her eyes travel to the sign atop the arc Klaus is currently driving under.

MYSTIC FALLS DRIVING ACADEMY.

Rebekah's lips part in confusion. "Nik, what is this?"

"You'll see," Klaus says, and eases the car into an empty parking space. He gets out, closing the door gingerly behind him (it still swings uselessly about its catch either way) and looks at her admonishingly. "Well? Aren't you coming?"

Rebekah clambers over the side of the car with little grace, almost tumbling down to the gravel (of course, she'll deny this later), and follows Klaus, looking around in wonder. There are people running about, some in those awful red t-shirts that have Driving Instructor embroidered in yellow across the back, and some who look to be her age (in human form, duh) sitting around, joking; laughing. "Why did you bring me here?"

Klaus guides her through the glass doors of the lobby and walks across the room, and Rebekah has to fight to keep the unimpressed look on her face. It's a stark contrast to the hustle and bustle of the parking lot, here in the lobby. She hears the clack of keyboards and smells something sharp and office-like as Klaus pulls her through another set of double-doors.

He raises his eyebrows and she looks over his shoulder—

and almost withdraws from the carnage she sees.

She sees cars everywhere: in the circuit, parked by the mock-hill, in between the poles they have set up, to stimulate pedestrians, she supposes. There are even more cardboard cut-outs of people here, and numerous pot-holes in the ground. But what fascinates her most isn't how the parking spaces line the corners of the circuit, but the sounds of crashing she hears every now and then. She sees cars backing into cars; cars rolling backwards downhill; cars lurching forward and backwards again in quick succession. She sees a boy of about seventeen crying because his instructor had whacked the back of his head with a clipboard. She sees a girl ripping her car door open and shaking her fist at it. She hears another girl yelling in despair, "_This wasn't the car I practiced on!"_. She sees a boy driving straight through a row of cardboard pedestrians. She sees several driving instructors looking like they've been through hell and back.

Rebekah turns to Klaus, and he's just looking at her pointedly.

"These people are terrible." She feels her corner of her lips twitching into a smile as she watched an instructor practically lunge at one of the more dreadful students. And then it hits her. "Stefan is very… patient."

Klaus slaps his palm to his forehead.

Rebekah turns back to the wasteland that is the driving academy, sees a car absolutely ripping across the circuit and crashing into the thicket of trees in the corner of the vast playground, and gasps. "Nik—we have to leave, right away."

—

It's Thursday.

Stefan is miserable.

Damon keeps enticing him to join in on the cutting of the snowflakes, tries to lure him into his glitter trap, even draws a beard on his own face (and compels Matt to do the same). "Beard brothers," he grins down at them, but Stefan just scrawls out yet another invitation down, calligraphy be damned.

The cafeteria's empty of people save for the prom committee, what with it being fourth period. Stefan's still stationed at the invitations-and-decorations-table because he's been threatened by Caroline, and Damon's there to check on him. Matt should have been there too, but he keeps sneaking off somewhere to "uh… check on the banners. Yeah, that".

The day draws on (and so does Damon, but this time tiny butterflies up Stefan's arm). Damon's about to suggest they just skip the whole thing altogether and get drunk at the Grill since Stefan looks so listless, but then the doors fly open and suddenly Rebekah's standing at the end of the room, eyes bright and searching.

"Stefan—"

"For the last time, Damon," Stefan snaps, jerking his arm away. "You can't draw a pony on my arm."

"No, bro." Damon grabs his brother's jaw and swivels it to Rebekah's direction.

Oh.

"Rebekah?" Stefan stands slowly while Damon fusses about straightening his shirt and brushing random odds out of his beard, which Rebekah is trying very hard to ignore (which is a feat, since she has to look Stefan in the eye to talk to him and all that). "What are you doing here?"

Rebekah ignores his question, instead choosing to march right up to him. "You can be so remarkably ignorant sometimes, Stefan Salvatore."

Not the best of greetings after three days of being ignored. Stefan frowns, crossing his arms over his chest. "Really? Well, the drastic drop in squirrel hit and runs beg to differ."

"I didn't mean _that_," Rebekah scoffs, flicking her hair over her shoulder. The chatter in the cafeteria dies down as everyone focuses on the bickering duo in the centre of the room (which is kind of mostly Damon's doing—he's scurrying around hissing out _Dude, you see that_? and _Fight, fight, fight_).

Stefan steps closer, glaring now. "Then what am I oh-so-ignorant about, Rebekah?"

"That you're in love with me," Rebekah declares, her cheeks pinking slightly, but her chin raised high.

Stefan stays rooted to the spot.

"It's true, isn't it?" Rebekah demands, her voice going up just a few notches. Her cheeks are flushed and her eyes are bright; frenzied. "You're in love with me."

The cafeteria is as silent as a mausoleum.

Stefan swallows, wants to look away, to the floor, to the lunch lady peering at them from behind the counter; anywhere but Rebekah's eyes, but finds that he can't. "I—"

.

.

.

**tbc**

.

.

.

.


	9. help, i'm alive

for jolie (for reasons). for dj (for always).

transatlantic twins and spirit animals; my life now feels like a sofia coppola movie.

—

**put down your sword and crown**

.

**ix**  
>help i'm alive<br>my heart keeps beating like a hammer

—

One two three days.

Stefan clears his throat, taking a subconscious step back, but Rebekah only follows. "You—you're obviously… You don't know what you're talking about."

"You kissed me," Rebekah insists feverishly. "And then you told me to drive!"

("Dude," Logan Bruno, resident stoner, says. "Not cool.")

Rebekah takes a step closer, but all Stefan does is take another step back, blinking down at her as if stuck in some skewed-up version of a waltz he'd rather not be in. In the back of her mind she can vaguely hear Damon muttering something about sitting her down and making her watch some film called _He's Just Not That Into You_, but right now all she can see is her finally reaching out (in both the literal and metaphorical sense), and Stefan determined to look the other way.

She should be used to this by now, Rebekah thinks. From the 20's right up to the new millennia, Stefan still pulls the condescension card on her when things don't go his way. She recalls an evening of dinner jackets and curled hair and pearls that gleam in the orange glow of the lamps; an evening of smooth jazz and lazy smiles and drop-waist Charleston dresses. She recalls their first kiss, with her backed up against the brick wall and him running a hand down the small of her back and breathing her in with closed eyes—

and then she remembers how he had denied that very incident when Nik asked about her smudged lipstick and starry eyes.

It's all she can do not to just _rip _off his stupid beard and stuff it down his throat, but considering the fact that she doesn't have her superhuman (or vampire) strength anymore (and also considering the fact that she really doesn't want her hands anywhere near his beard right now), she does the only thing she deems possible at this very moment.

She grabs the container of glitter from Damon's hands and slams it in Stefan's face. The whole cafeteria erupts with cheers as he doubles over, coughing and spluttering, and Rebekah takes that moment to drag him up by the neck of his shirt to her eye level.

"You listen to me, Stefan Salvatore," she says through closed teeth. "I have sixteen days left to live. You made me think I'd wasted my time on you before, and you're about to do it again." She shoves him away and he stumbles back against Damon (who jerks his head away for fear of getting glitter into his own drawn-on beard). "I won't have it. Not this time."

She stalks out of the cafeteria the same way she came in: with a purpose. Chin up, shoulders back, _smile_.

—

One two three four days.

"Good evening."

Caroline looks up from her laptop where she'd been looking through pictures of past proms to see Klaus perched on her windowsill. Rolling her eyes, she closes her MacBook and leans back in her swivel chair. "You've been busy these past two days."

"Rebekah," Klaus says, rolling his eyes as he walks over to where she's sitting. "Stefan's going to have to do something about their situation; I can't be expected to coach her through her driving lessons."

Caroline scoffs, a quiet one. "Aren't you the Brother of the Year?"

Klaus doesn't respond, just runs his finger lightly along her shoulder. "What are you doing?"

"Nothing," Caroline says easily, surreptitiously nudging something deeper under her desk with the toe of her ballet flat. Klaus is walking about her room now, smirking up at the stars on her ceiling and looking curiously over at one of her paintings that he'd overlooked: a crude one, but a very Caroline one, of geese and a farmhouse. He leans closer to look at it, his expression now unreadable.

"You really do miss him," he murmurs, and she wonders if she's supposed to respond, since it seems like he's saying it more to himself than to her. She pushes a lock of her hair behind her ear, and wonders what's left of her life that he hasn't somehow managed to coax out of her. Wonders why he seems to think her experiences just as laudable as his, wonders why he insists on weaving her history with his own rich one. Wonders if he'll take it with him, wherever he goes.

He turns to her then, and Caroline, for some reason, feels some sort of heaviness to come with his next words. Klaus' lips part. "Caroline, do you—"

"I'd love to."

—

They go on yet another one of their midnight walks (Caroline's not sure when it started to become a thing), and this time they don't even glance at the mouth of the cemetery as they stroll past.

He kisses her later, with the stars bringing out the silver in her hair, with the lazy smile of the moon reflected in the still lake, with her soft sweater scratching against the cool bark of a willow tree he's pushing her up against. She laughs into his mouth and it mingles with his own and bounces off of the silence of the night and it's silly, but she thinks it all feels very much like an 80's movie; the best kind of movie there is.

Caroline doesn't want it to end.

—

One two three four five days.

You do realize, Damon says, as he primes the shaver for the inevitable hacking-off of Stefan's beard (because no matter how many times Damon dunks his brother's head underwater; no matter how many times he scrutinizes the way Ariel combs her hair with a fork and tries to do the same with Stefan's beard, the glitter simply would not come out), "You're kind of an idiot."

"What happened to carpe diem?" Damon says.

"What happened to _You drive, I drive_?" Damon says.

Stefan stares at his brother. "Isn't that a Bieber song?"

"Nah," Damon frowns. "Pretty sure it's not. Anyway, my point is—you brood too much. There's got to be some middle ground here."

"But—" Stefan winces when Damon accidentally jabs the whirring blades against his chin. "It's Rebekah." He says her name laced with a heavy sigh. "How does someone find middle ground with her?"

Damon smiles ruefully, feeling very much like the older brother he sometimes forget he is. "Well, that's for you to dot dot dot, isn't it?"

—

One two three four days.

Elena holds a purple glitter-pen in her hand, staring dubiously at the graph Caroline's just put before her with a flourish. As it turns out, it takes two days to come up with operation: distract, intrigue and conquer—

("_Move_, Elena," Caroline whines, grabbing the pen out of Elena's hand to capitalize the header, because "at least this way I know you're dedicated to this plan". _Operation: Distract, Intrigue and Conquer (while Keeping Klaus away),_ she corrects with her flowing script, and Elena fights the urge to roll her eyes.

She fails.)

—because practically everything Elena suggests gets shot down by Caroline, and also to put their plans into action.

Elena's about to tell Caroline that all the spreadsheets and charts really aren't necessary, but doesn't get a chance to because Damon suddenly bursts into the room without knocking (as is his modus operandi) and chokes on the blood bag he's been sipping on.

"Operation: Dick?" he asks incredulously once Caroline's thumped his back hard enough to hurl a whale back into the ocean. Once he had recovered, he straightens up and fixes them with his best (he thinks) debonair smile. "Ladies, if you wanted to seal the deal, tap that thang; go vertical jogging, you know I'm right—"

"_Out_!" Caroline screeches, launching the whiteboard—which looks suspiciously like the one Stefan has been using for Rebekah's driving lessons—at his face. Damon has time to duck, but not without his blood bag flying out of his hand and splattering across the scented lilac-coloured papers Caroline had spent hours meticulously structuring, restructuring, organizing it by alphabet, and restructuring once again.

Needless to say, Caroline is livid.

(At the expression on her face, Elena quickly exits the room, muttering something about feeding Caroline's goldfish. Caroline's too angry to remember that she doesn't own any goldfish.)

(Caroline's also too angry to pick up on the sounds of Elena practically running out the front door to escape the inevitable face-off that's about to go down.)

"Get your hands off of my notes," she growls through gritted teeth as Damon tries to wipe away the blood with fumbling hands. She elbows him in the stomach as he peers at one of his papers.

"I like how twisty Operation: Dick is," Damon offers as he raises the paper higher. Caroline stands uselessly on the tips of her toes to grasp at it.

"First of all," Caroline begins heatedly, "it is Operation: D.I.C.K. And secondly, _get your hands off of my notes_."

"Blondie," Damon pauses, bemused, "why do you have a diagram of a stick figure in a suit and why is there…" He squints at the paper once more. "…a headless chicken on the ground next to him?"

"It's not a chicken," Caroline snaps, snatching it out of his hands. She fixes him with a haughty stare and squares her shoulders, matching him height for height. "It's a rollerskate."

"Really."

"_Yes_, really," Caroline says petulantly. "Now if you'll excuse me—"

"And you're planning on distracting Elijah by piquing his interest in a pair of… Rollerskates."

The way Damon says it makes it sound like such a crude, half-assed plan, but Caroline knows better than to fall into his trap.

"Yes," she snips, making a spectacle of kicking the door open. "Show yourself out."

Damon frowns. "You do realize this is my house?"

Caroline growls a curse under her breath. Elena had suggested they organize Operation: D.I.C.K. in the barely-used drawing room of the Salvatore boarding house, since Klaus might swoop into Caroline's room at any given moment and uncover their insidious plans, which is also the case with Elijah and Elena's room (besides, her living room's still in shambles and if it's one thing Caroline hates, it's dust and rubble messing up her meticulous notes).

Before she can think of a snappy comeback, Damon's already launched his emptied blood bag at her head to throw her off, already scooped up an armful of Caroline's notes, to-do-lists, and blueprints—yes, blueprints—on Operation: D.I.C.K. and is already darting away, yelling over his shoulder: "This means I'm privy to anything that goes on under my roof!"

Caroline stands for a moment, stunned, before crushing the bag in her hand and following the scent of Damon's cologne through the dark, twisty halls. She stomps her way upstairs, yelling out taunts ("You can run but you can't hide!" and jeers ("Your new haircut _sucks_.") in hopes of drawing him out. She hears a flurry of footsteps and vaguely hears him calling out "_Kol said it looked rad_" and immediately pounces on it, turning a corner. Of _course_ Damon would run straight to his only safe haven—his bedroom.

In her blind rage, Caroline is pretty sure she has enough incentive to outrun Damon, but he's about 146 years faster than her and had also gotten an unfair head start. By the time she'd vamp-sped to his room, Damon is already in bed, calmly perusing her _Caroline's Guide to Decoding Operation: D.I.C.K._—so she got a little ambitious and started writing everything in barely-decipherable codes and symbols—guidebook that she'd painstakingly penned in one sitting (and of which Elena had rolled her eyes at).

"_You_," she snarls, stepping into his room the way a mountain lion might stalk a… mountain goat (because what else is there to eat on a mountain?), flexing her fingers (she still hasn't made up her mind between strangling him, or slamming his face through a wall) and it would have been equal parts menacing and impressive, and Damon probably would have felt a little threatened, had she not tripped over his Persian rug and landed face first on what appears to be a black thong.

"Damon, you _slut_," she cries, choking on lace and chartreuse.

"Oops." Damon's by her side immediately, but not to help her to her feet as she'd assumed. Her hand flails uselessly in the air as Damon scoops the thong up and nonchalantly flicks it out his open window. "Alaric must have left it here."

"Alaric?" Caroline snorts. "Seriously?"

Damon just waggles his eyebrows. He drops back onto his bed, spreading out luxuriously, and pats the space next to him. Caroline stands her ground, arms stiffly at her sides.

Waits.

"So," Damon says, "tell me again why you've turned my drawing room into a spider's web of yarn and..." He looks down at her guidebook. "...trickery?"

Caroline opens her mouth, thinks it over, and closes it again. Damon's getting _nothing_ out of her. If he has half a brain he would've figured it all out by now, but then Damon's grin registers in her mind and she realises that Damon's _enjoying_ this—that he wants her to admit to her 'trickery', as he calls it.

"You're an ass," is what she says.

"I'm an ass, I'm a creep; ooh Damon's picking on me again." Damon shrugs. "Heard it all. But you know what I haven't heard in a while?" He raises a finger when Caroline looks like she's about to shoot off another insult. "That was rhetorical. _Damon, I need your help_. Now _that's_ something I'd want to hear come out of that over-used mouth of yours."

Caroline frowns as she makes her way to his bed, carefully collecting her notes. "I don't need your help."

"Really now?" Damon whips out the guidebook once again and peers at the diagram she'd drawn up. "Because it looks like you were planning on clubbing Elijah over the head with a chi—rollerskate. Wouldn't compulsion be easier?"

"Damon!" Caroline gasps, whacking his nose with her rolled-up blueprint. "Even if Elijah can be compelled now, which I highly doubt, we could never do that—it's against everything we stand for!"

A raised eyebrow. "We?"

"Yes, _we_," Caroline growls. She reaches for her book but still Damon holds it out of reach, that knowing look on his face. "I don't _need _your help."

"Whatever you say, Blondie," Damon says and sprawls back against his pillows.

—

One two three four five six days.

Elijah's settled back nice and comfortable against the porcelain of the bathtub, but his mind won't quite do the same. "I don't quite know what to make of this."

Elena just laughs lightly and leans back against his chest, liking the weight of Elijah's chin propped on her head, smiling against the feel of his arm around her stomach. Elena lets her fingers peek out of the bubbles before promptly pulling them back inside the hot water. It's particularly cold today.

"Caroline and Damon were driving me crazy," Elena says, sinking lower into the bubbles. "More so than usual."

Elijah brushes his lips against the back of her head so lightly that Elena's not sure it happened—the only proof of it is the heat creeping up her neck, and not from the water. "But it's understandable, considering the circumstances," Elijah says.

Elena falls silent, and Elijah doesn't push it. As the days go by, Elena finds that they more or less talk (or don't talk, when they're in the bathtub) about anything and everything—but not the things that they really should talk about.

_Things like, __What's going on?_

Between the two of them, Elijah had surprised her by being the one to bring it up. Somewhere between the careless hand-brushing and the nonchalance of her bathtub invitations, a kink had started to form between his eyebrows. When she'd gotten to her room earlier, Elijah was already there like he said he'd be, just flipping through yet another one of her books. He hadn't said anything when she'd gone straight to her bathroom, but he hadn't followed immediately either.

Sometimes she can hear Caroline shrieking into her ear (or smacking her in the back of her head), "_Just_ _kiss him already._"

But she can't. Not when he looks at her that way, not when she feels like grabbing his hand every single time, _don't go_. Not when there's so many questions bubbling up her throat that she feels like choking at times.

That still doesn't stop her from wondering. _What's going to happen in the end_?, she thinks as she falls asleep at night with Elijah's fingers running through her hair. What kind of answer would he give her?

Elena's not sure she wants to find out. So she stays silent.

—

One two three four five days.

There's that irritating banging sound again, and Rebekah groans because seriously, how hard is it for a girl to get a moment of her own in a house rolling with men? Amelia whines and nudges her cheek with her damp nose and Rebekah spares her a small smile, before screaming at Kol to _piss off_ from underneath her covers.

"Are you doing nasty things to yourself?" Kol calls wickedly from behind the door, and Rebekah seethes, because she can just _see_ that stupid smile lighting up his stupid face.

Not that she's going to fall for his trap or anything. She's not going to give him the satisfaction of knowing he can get under her skin so easily. So she fumes in silence, hugging Amelia closer to her chest. Amelia lets out another whine and squirms away, and Rebekah feels even more pathetic than before. She sighs and feels sleep coming like a heavy veil over her eyes—how odd it was that humans need so much of it—and tries to tune out the sound of Amelia scratching and howling at the door.

Sleep pulls her under.

When she wakes, she's facedown in her pillow and vaguely remembers turning over so she can breathe better—

(Damon had registered his astonishment at seeing them alive every morning.

"Kudos to you guys for not dying in your sleep yet, what with not being used to breathing," he comments as he makes his way to the den. Elijah, straight-faced as always, had sent Damon sprawling face-first into the wall with a casual flick of his finger for that.)

—and takes pleasure in the now-silent room. Her arm brushes against something soft, something warm, and she thinks Amelia must have fallen asleep beside her. She snuggles closer, but there's no tell-tale sound of Amelia's snort.

With her eyes still closed she frowns, poking her fingers into Amelia's fur. Not as long as Rebekah remembers, either.

She opens her eyes.

"Hi," says Stefan's significantly-trimmed beard.

Rebekah's too stunned to shriek. "Wha—how—why are you here?"

"Klaus called me."

Of course. "Why?"

"He said something about not wanting to have to teach you how to drive one more day," Stefan says sombrely, mostly for her benefit.

Rebekah frowns, because _that bitch of a brother_. "And how'd you get in?"

"Kol picked up a few pirating skills from Finn," Stefan says.

Rebekah glares, because _those bitches she has for brothers_. The sting at Stefan coming only for Klaus settles in her chest and hums away like some incessant bee, and she wraps her arms around her torso, wishing for Amelia, wishing away Stefan's unreadable eyes; wishing herself away.

She's not in a mood for another one of those _I like you, but it's always going to be Elena_ talks. God knows she's had enough of those throughout the years. Somewhere in between Klaus and Elijah harping over Katerina and having to endure five hundred years or their unnatural fixation on her, she'd come to realize that her life has been defined by standing quietly by her brothers while the doppelganger pulls and tugs away everything she'd come to care about, like a magician and his tablecloth trick. He pulls so fast the tableware seems not the slightest bit affected, but if you look close enough, or if you _cared _to look close enough, you'd see. You would see the difference, if you only ca—

"I'm sorry," Stefan says, breaking through her train of thought. He searches her face with his eyes. "You were right."

It takes a while to sink in. Rebekah swallows and hitches her covers higher, so only her eyes and the top of her head are visible. "I was right?"

She forces herself to meet his eyes (and his beard) when he says, "Yeah."

Suddenly she's thankful for the blankets, because she feels heat creeping up her neck and just knows her face is turning that ghastly shade of red again. Stefan slowly pulls back the covers, inch by inch, and traces a finger down her cheek.

"You're warm," he says softly.

Ever so hesitantly, she places her hand over his, keeping it in place. "Still getting used to it."

He rests his forehead against hers, and says, "I love you."

Her heart swells.

—

When they're finally stepping down the swerve of the grand staircase; when Stefan's trying to tell her how the different gears in modern cars actually work as they enter the sitting room, Rebekah stops mid-"_Yes_, that's all well and good, but can't we just stamp down on the pedal thing?" and stares blankly at Kol, Klaus, and Damon sitting in a row on the leather couch. Kol looks too pleased with himself; Klaus is slumped in his seat, glowering at the lot of them as Damon leans towards him with a black Sharpie and a critical air to his gaze. Elijah's studying his reflection in the mirror above the mantelpiece.

They all have beards drawn on their faces.

Rebekah turns to Stefan, speechless.

"Beard brothers," Stefan shrugs.

—

One two three four five six days.

"Ready?" Elena straightens her turtleneck.

"Ready." Caroline nods in confirmation, running a black-painted nail down the length of the brass knocker, mustering up enough willpower to make this plan work—because they haven't exactly got the best track record when it comes to their plans—before banging on it with all her might.

The doppelganger and the baby vampire wait for the usual clatter of footsteps and banging-into-walls (Kol always insists on shoving everyone out of the way on his plight to be the first one to the door) while trying their best not to fidget or look suspicious. Which results in them staring hard at the Brazillian Rosewood before them, determined not to look at each other, their hands set straight and stiff at their sides.

When the door finally swings open, Kol's slightly out of breath, grinning ear to ear with Rebekah following soon after, her hair looking windswept.

"Oh, you two!" Kol exclaims, throwing the door open even further. "I'm afraid we don't have any lessons toda…" Kol trails off, finally noticing the two girls' attire. "Have you joined a cult? Why are you two wearing full-on black?"

—

"So," Caroline chirps, lifting her teacup to her lips.

"So?" Kol prompts, rubbing the back of his neck.

Truthfully, Caroline hadn't thought about the continuity of her sentence—she'd just said it to cut through the awkward silence filling up the room. She casts a furtive glance at Elena, whose eyes are bugging out at her to _say something_. Elijah frowns slightly but doesn't say anything; just shifts in his seat and takes another sip of his mint tea.

Rebekah side-eyes Elena (who's sitting way too close to Elijah than she would have ever approved), Amelia's head propped on her knee.

"So!" Caroline says unwaveringly, "Ready for your road test, Rebekah?"

"I think so," Rebekah says, a small, pleased smile on her face. "Elijah, Nik and Kol are coming along. We're actually going in..." she frowns down at her delicate, silver-plated wristwatch, "half an hour or so." The way she raises her eyebrows at Elena, so unimpressed, tells the brunette everything she needs to know—clearly, her being here was a nuisance.

"Are you?" Elena asks anyway, widening her eyes at Caroline. (Of course, Rebekah ignores Elena.)

"Sounds exciting!" She claps her hands again, dropping her teacup in the process. It clatters down onto the fourth century Indian rug, staining the woven threads.

She'd been expecting a reaction (a groan at the most), but not, like, _utter pandemonium_. Honestly, with the way the Originals react, it's like a nuclear bomb dropped onto the roof of their house.

"Eli!" Rebekah gasps, clutching at Kol's arm. Kol jumps from his seat and seems to be beside himself with worry, alternating between shifting from foot to foot to darting about the room in circles. Even Elijah's eyes grow wide at the growing stain, not helped by Amelia lapping it up with her tongue and spreading it further.

"Amelia Mikaelson," Elijah says sharply, already pulling the dog away. "Stop it at once."

Amelia whimpers, and Rebekah seems to shake out of her reverie, wailing something about Klaus and indispensible investments and _goddamn you Caroline_ and killing whole Indian tribes. Kol scurries to the kitchen and comes back, waving around a bottle of Windex, but Rebekah practically swings it out of his grip, and it flies across the room and crashes out the window.

"That won't work, you useless _twat_," she snarls.

Kol steps closer, narrowing his eyes. "Well, what would you _suggest_, you back-garden tramp?"

Elena and Caroline stay rooted in their seats, blinking at the spectacle before them.

Elijah crosses the room, muttering something about getting a rag.

At the sharp pinch she feels on her elbow, Caroline all but yelps, "I'll help!"

—

The kitchen is a much quieter place, and Caroline finds herself crinkling her eyebrows in confusion when she sees Elijah leaning over the sink, pinching the bridge of his nose. He looks troubled, his tie slightly askew (which she can't help but gape at), and since she hasn't exactly been chummy with him since his arrival in Mystic Falls, she wonders if it'd be okay to ask him what's wrong.

But then she shakes he head and tells herself to stop thinking, stop wondering; she's done enough of that (too much of that) lately. So she moves from her spot by the smooth marble island counter and rests a light hand on his arm.

"Is everything okay?"

Elijah blinks twice and seems to remember where he is as he twists the damp rag in his hands.

"Yes, everything's fine." He gives her a glance and says, "Niklaus is really fond of that rug."

Caroline swallows at the mention of him and tries not to look away, holding the Original's gaze. "Where is he, anyway?"

With a non-committal wave of his hand, Elijah says, "Around. Probably getting some errands done before Rebekah's test. Stefan has told us it will take a while."

Caroline's immensely pleased to hear this. She recalls her own driving lessons and snorts inwardly at Stefan's tact—it wouldn't _just_ take a while; it would probably take the better half of the day. She tries not to look too gleeful as she gently pries the rag from his hands—since he looks so distracted—and tells him she'd bring it to Rebekah for him.

(Of course, Rebekah and Kol fight over who gets to clean up the splotch.

"_You _wouldn't know how to get it out properly!"

"Well, _you_ would know about difficult stains, wouldn't you, you little strumpet?")

When she gets back to the kitchen (with Amelia in tow—apparently even the dog couldn't handle Rebekah and Kol manhandling each other over a stain), Elijah's still staring out the window. Caroline shifts from foot to foot, and says, "Rebekah's going to do fine, you know."

"Mm?" Elijah asks. "Oh. Yes. Of course she is." There's a sound of Rebekah shrieking and Kol grunting and something—the glass from the Rosewood cabinet, probably—shattering from the sitting room, and Elijah shakes his head, somehow managing to give the impression of rolling his eyes without even doing it. "I better make sure Elena's still unscathed."

"_Speaking of Elena_," Caroline intervenes, leaning against the counter and effectively blocking his way. "She tells me you make a mean chilli."

Elijah looks at her, waiting for her to continue. Caroline suddenly feels very much like a student called before the school's principal.

"I'm really hungry," she continues, looking at him pointedly.

He continues looking.

She presses further, "Like, _really hungry_."

Right on cue, Amelia lets out a whine.

Elijah sighs resignedly, turning to the Northland refrigerator (the pièce de résistance of the whole room, really, with its glass doors and stainless steel wrap). "I'll get the minced meat."

"Wait!" Caroline barks, and Elijah stops in his tracks. She's rummaging around her bag for something and pulls it out, waving it around triumphantly. "We should wear these while we cook!"

"...Rollerskates?" Elijah asks, quite bewildered.

At his confusion, Caroline beams and explains: "I always did have an _A Cinderella Story_ fetish."

—

Elijah _so_ has something hot and heavy in his mind, Caroline surmises as she chops up the onions, bringing the knife down harder than necessary to break up the silence stuffing up the room. He'd barely hummed a response when she'd asked how much garlic he needed; just sat there, back straight as he tended to his tomatoes, eyebrows constantly furrowed and eyes never straying from the task at hand as she natters on and on. Every so often Elijah would drop a scrap down at Amelia, or thank Caroline absently for whatever miscellany she'd passed him, but that's pretty much it. She's never heard so much silence in a room.

Which only makes her talk even more.

Ten minutes into their little cooking foray, Elijah is made painfully aware of her fear of moths as she twirls and spins around him in her rollerskates. Thirteen minutes in, and she's revealed that her first ever B was for gym class back in fourth grade, and she'd joined the cheer squad and made sure she was anointed as captain by the end of the semester (to show Coach K. Thomas that she could suck a duck), and by the time the sauce had started to resemble something edible, Caroline had revealed that she used to paint her dog's nails the brightest yellow she could find, until one day it ran away, which while scarring her for life, also managed to instil some sort of inability to see poor defenceless people without having the urge to drop everything and help them and love them and make sure everything was alright and reassure them that nothing bad was ever going to happen to them again ev—

"You really would do anything for Elena, wouldn't you?" Elijah asks, and Caroline finds the grip she has on the stainless steel knife tightening involuntarily. She wonders what he means by it. Maybe it's the way he words it; so calm, yet so sudden—but she's heard enough from Elena to know that Elijah is nothing if not premeditative.

She flicks her eyes downwards, choosing her words carefully. "I'd do anything for anyone I love."

Elijah glides towards her with ease, manouvering himself around Amelia and never once tripping over the rollerskates she'd chosen specifically for him—pitch black, with flames licking up the sides—as he comes to a smooth stop before her. It's _unnerving_, how silent he is, and she finds herself saying: "Thanks for humouring me. Most people don't."

Elijah quirks an eyebrow. "Oh?"

She looks down.

Surprisingly, Elijah speaks up. "Is that why you do things for people, then? Because you expect something in return?"

She gives a light laugh. "No." Her knife stills as she ponders his question. "I do things for them because I love them. Because I hope, one day, they'll see it." She doesn't dare meet his eyes as she says, "Because I hope, one day, that maybe I'll be just as important to them as they are to me."

Caroline feels his eyes running across her face and her cheeks burn with something that feels a lot like embarrassment—what a stupid, stupid thing to have admitted to an Original. He'd been paying more attention to Amelia than he had her; what makes her think he would actually care?

She meets his eyes and opens her mouth to tell him to just forget it, but the simple act of Elijah resting his hand on her shoulder shocks the words right out of her mouth.

"Caroline," he says, waving Amelia's sniffing nose away, "when you do something noble and beautiful and nobody notices, do not be sad." He reaches a hand down to take the knife from her hands and chops up the rest of the onions for her as he continues, "The sun every morning is a beautiful spectacle and yet most of the audience is asleep."

He finishes the onions and looks her in the eye again.

"That's gorgeous," Caroline says, stunned. She feels strangely winded. "Who said that? Socrates?"

"John Lennon," Elijah says, and his lip twitches just the slightest.

Caroline doesn't bother hiding her smile—

but then the smile slides off her face as Amelia starts growling. It takes a moment for Caroline to take in the sight of Elijah thumbing the tip of the knife, all trace of humour gone from his eyes, which are still trained on hers.

"That aside, I'm pretty sure there's something you're not telling me."

Elijah glides closer, and even with the sound of Amelia snarling away, Caroline can hear herself gulp.

—

One two three four five (and a quarter) days.

Under the pretense of joining Caroline and Elijah in the kitchen, Elena manages to slip away quietly while Rebekah and Kol are still going at it. She runs down the hallways as fast as her sneakers can take her—but she ends up doing some kind of weird jogging in between, since she's supposed to be stealthy, after all—not knowing how much time Caroline's managed to steal for her but finding herself in no position to care.

She pushes open the door to Esther's reading room with sweaty palms and heads straight to the shelves by the window, running a frantic finger down the spines of the thick books before remembering with a start that the grimoire she'd been particularly engrossed by had been on the desk—she whirls around, her hair flying about her cheeks, and is prepared to just grab the spellbook and go before realizing her hand is closing around nothing—the only thing left on the desk are the dried sages, and a neat little square where the grimoire used to be.

Upon further inspection, she discovers it's not a neat little square, but a clean spot where dust hadn't managed to settle yet. She stares at it for a fraction of a second before jerking her hand away jsut the slightest. No way, no one had seen, they couldn't possibly have foun—

"Looking for this?"

Elena snaps her head around so fast her neck cricks, but it barely registers in her mind because Klaus is seated in the armchair in the corner of the room, casually licking the tip of his thumb before flicking to the next page of the—of the grimoire.

She swallows, slowly backing away from the desk. "How did you...?"

"Damon—"

"Damon, you _slut_," Elena hisses before she can quite stop herself.

Klaus raises an eyebrow, looking quite unimpressed. "Are you done?"

Elena just glares and crosses her arms over her chest. "How did you find out?" she asks again.

"Damon told Kol," Klaus drawls, and throws her a look as though it was quite obvious. "And Kol made a vlog about it and uploaded it onto his YouTube account."

"Kol has a—?"

The sentence dies in her throat, because Klaus is suddenly out of the armchair and in front of her, slamming her back against the bookshelf and his lips twisted in a snarl.

"Did you really think we wouldn't find out, Elena?" Klaus says.

"Oh yes, Elijah knows," Klaus says.

"He was quite upset of your snooping around behind his back, to say the least." Klaus says with a smirk, loosening his hold on her upper arms. "Who knows what he'll do in his state?"

It sounds like a threat.

"Elijah wouldn't—"

"You don't know him as I do," Klaus says, his voice sliding like smooth silk. "But you've seen what he's done; what he's capable of, when his restraint..." Klaus lets his sentence hang in the air, relishing in the way Elena's pupils dilate. "...Snaps."

Elena's blood goes cold. "Caroline."

Clearly, this isn't the response Klaus had been expecting. "Excuse me?"

"Caroline's alone with him right now." A strained whisper is all she can manage.

Klaus cuts his eyes to hers. "What?" he asks sharply.

In a movement that seems almost synchronized, the two of them turn on their heels and rush across the room to the door—where they engage in a battle of wills (and rough shouldering) when they both get caught in the doorframe—shoving each other out of the way as they speed deftly down the hallways and jostling each other as they all but trample down the winding staircase, throwing indomitable looks at each other's way every so often; each determined to be the first to reach Caroline.

Elena feels the breath knocked out of her chest as she trips over that damned rug that Rebekah had been so concerned about earlier and tears desperately at the back of Klaus' shirt in an attempt to right herself, and they both end up crashing to the hardwood floor. Klaus lets out a grunt laced with a few choice swear words as Elena scrambles over his back to reach the kitchen.

Klaus shoots his hand out and grabs her ankle and she tumbles down again, and she kicks at his face, momentarily forgetting that he's lost all ability to heal himself at a moment's notice. Kick comes to scratch comes to push comes to shove, and Klaus is this close to reminding her he still has other methods of ripping her heart out and Elena's this close to telling him he has a stupid haircut, when:

"What the bloody hell are you two _idiots_ doing?" Rebekah, who apparently had been sitting on the couch flipping through Vogue all along thereby witnessing their little brawl, blusters.

Klaus and Elena break apart, blinking like deer caught in a headlight, before rushing to their feet and down the hall, no longer looking at each other; only straining their ears for any sign of—

"Elijah," Elena bursts out, her sneakers skidding across the smooth marble.

Because Caroline's crumpled on the ground, something dark and red smeared all over her skin and her clothing, and Elijah's towering over her, one hand gripping Amelia by the neck, her fur is matted with something red, and the other gripping a knife dripping with more of it.

—

tbc

—

well, this is it, guys. my last update before I have to leave on the 3rd of may for a few months. ten weeks, at the most. i just want to thank every single one of you for reading and reviewing and for your never-ending support of this flaming ball of crackfic. please don't lost faith in me! i've finished the last two chapters (give me a moment; sobbing my fricken SOUL out because i've grown strangely attached to this fic) and will post them up as soon as i have the free time. it won't be anytime soon, though.

just - thank you. so much. this story is definitely for you guys.


	10. fly straight to the sun

hey look, i updated. miracles do happen.

so i started writing this a year+ ago, and i am just so overwhelmed by all the feedback i have gotten/keep getting. even when i was having writer's block. even when the last time i updated this was... almost eleven months ago (30th april!). so many things have happened on canon since then, and heck, even i forgot how this story went. so i had to go back and re-read it.

this chapter is unedited, apologies to my wonderful beta. i just thought it wasn't fair to make you wait any longer.

P/S: as always, written for the beautiful DJ.

—

**put down your sword and crown**

.

**x  
><strong>fly straight to the sun  
>i feel like we've just begun<p>

—

_Tick—_

It's not like he's made a habit of it.

(He really hasn't, he'll assure you, eyes as dark as the blood ripping through his lips, dead body limp in his hands, smiling as though he'd willingly slaughter a whole town just to prove his point—

—and he would.)

But sometimes, when the skies are dark and the night's playing some sort of silver tune, Klaus used to go up to the roof with a mug of something warm (usually blood) and spend a good portion of the night there. Elijah thinks he goes up there to try and touch the stars—Finn really did believe he could.

"Does it make you feel invincible, brother, being up there?" Finn had asked softly one night as Klaus descended the spiral stairway that connected the roof to his drawing room. The disdain in his voice is evident even through the dull hum of liquor. "Does it make you feel like a god?"

Klaus doesn't say anything as he finishes his scotch (because lies are such capricious things, and he likes to choose his lies well).

He doesn't go up there to feel like a god. He goes up there to talk to Mikael.

Although talk isn't quite the word for it, the tilt of his crystal tumbler and the smirk on his lips as he contemplates the dark sky feels like a conversation.

"I bet it just tears you up inside, doesn't it?" Klaus asks, setting down his tumbler on the stone railing.

"That in the end you weren't the one to kill me?" he asks.

"That in the end," he says, head tilted back as far as it can go, his hand working of their own accord and whipping his tumbler into the sky where it flashed like a shooting star, "we're not running anymore?"

Klaus lets out a breath and watches as it wraps around his words in a plume of white. "I'm not running anymore."

.

.

.

_Tick, tock—_

It's like she's seeing red. Kol is taking _forever_, and she's pretty sure it's some form of revenge for the beating she had given him earlier—

("_Koo-ool,"_ she'd whined when her brother had rushed into the room to see what Elena and Nik were rolling around, kicking and screaming about. "Hurry up."

Kol eyes Klaus practically hurl himself down the hall and into the kitchen; barely bats an eye when the door slams shut behind them. "But what about the rug?"

The words were barely out of his mouth before he finds himself being man-handled by Rebekah's man-hands.

(And if someone asks her what two mountains crashing together sounds like, she'll say it's like shoving Kol's idiotic face into the fourth century Indian rug.)

"_I_—" Slam. "—are _terribly late_—" Slam. "—for my _driver's test_—" Slam. "—and _all you care about_—" Slam. "—is this _stupid_—" Slam. "—_godforsaken_—" Slam. "—_rug_."

Suddenly she's on her back, and Kol's pushing _her_ face into the tea stain this time. "Do you think I'm unaware of that, dear sister?" He grimaces as Rebekah sinks her teeth and spit into his open palm. "Do you think I haven't been waiting for this moment just as long as have?"

Rebekah flips them around and, with her elbow, strikes him by his neck and in his disorientation pins him down to the floor. She holds him in place, hair falling about her eyes, and says in a low growl, "You replaced my hair mousse with shaving cream."

"For _luck_," he spits right back.)

—and there's some sort of commotion in the kitchen and she's just so _exasperated_ at the lot of them, she barges right in to tell them exactly how she feels about them overlooking the fact that it's the most important day of her shortly-cut life.

"You arseholes—" The words die in her throat when she sees Elijah holding up Amelia, in what she can smell to be blood, and then to Caroline, who's being helped up by Elena, the a horrific gash running from chest to stomach.

She's a thousand-year old vampire used to watching her brother tear men apart, limb from limb, with their bare hands, but it's not the blood that makes her want to throw up. It's the fact that her brother, her regal older brother Elijah, Original Vampire-Turned-Original-Human Elijah, was wearing rollerskates in the middle of all of it.

Suddenly the room is a blur as Klaus lunges for Elijah and throws him across the marble island, Elena's yelling something inaudible, Caroline's just lying there in Elena's red-stained arms so still and so dead, and somewhere in the midst of all the chaos, Rebekah hears Amelia barking. Rebekah claps her hands to her mouth, to stifle a scream, but what comes out instead is a peal of laughter, loud and shrill. She bites her lips, screws her eyes shut to stop the tears, doubles over, pinches her sides; still the laughter would not stop.

And then the pot of chilli goes flying across the room and lies battered and defeated in a corner. There are sauce stains everywhere: on the tables, splattered across the walls, even speckled across her pristine white dress. Suddenly all the laughter is gone from her lips, and Rebekah decides she's had enough. "I am _late_ for my driver's test—_what the hell_ is going on here?"

.

.

.

_Tick, tock, tick—_

It's not exactly ideal.

(And the glint in Elijah's eyes tells her just that.)

But they'd both heard the crash coming from upstairs, and Elijah was already setting the knife down to make his way out the door, and she saw no other option to stop him other than grabbing the knife from his hand herself and stabbing it into her own chest. She hears the sound of astonishment he's making—he's not horrified; he's seen it all, but really—and shuffles towards Elijah's outstretched arms on unsteady feet.

Except Amelia chooses that moment to pounce on Elijah and he stumbles forward and into the pot of chili, only narrowly missing Caroline, who was already swaying and blinking away dark spots.

And then the knife slips, and she blinks no more.

.

.

.

_Tick, tock, tick, tock—_

"So let me get this straight."

Elijah has his head bowed and his eyes closed, and with his hands clasped together and his back to them it's almost as if he's praying. Elena doesn't know what exactly it is Elijah prays for (if he does pray at all—religion is such a fickle matter when you're a being built on the very recesses of it). She wonders if God (if God is even enough for the likes of him) would even hear him out, but then Elijah is standing before her, and Elijah is throwing the grimoire down on the coffee table.

Really, it's barely a throw; the grimoire follows the graceful arc of his wrist in which he'd flicked it—but bound leather meeting oiled wood shouldn't make sounds so loud it rings in your ears. All thought flees Elena's mind.

"You conceived this—this plan…" Elijah trails off, and he lets his eyes wander from the dusty spell book to Caroline's blood staining the folds of his sleeves, to Amelia covered in chili, grinning up at them; to the rollerskates that he had cast aside mere minutes ago, to the dark stain on his antique rug. He would have set his glance on Caroline, had the vampire not been ushered out of the room despite her protests as soon as she'd woken up. Even Kol knows when to step aside.

Klaus' eyes had been following Elijah's. The hybrid's eyes linger on the rug and he almost swallows, but then he just shakes his head and storms out the room. Elena's throat is suddenly dry.

"…just to get your hands on this?"

Technically, Elena wants to say, it was all part of Operation: D.I.C.K., which was mostly a product of Caroline's design, but Elijah is being quiet in a way she's never heard before, so she decides against it. She takes a deep breath and looks him in the eye. "Yes."

Elijah's mouth is set, but his eyes reveal nothing. "Why?"

She catches her lower lip between her teeth, and for a fraction of a second Elijah's eyes aren't on hers.

Elena releases her lower lip, now dark and wet. "You know why."

Elijah looks away, but Elena knows it's far from over. Her next words come out rushed, but it has to be said. "I know this is what you want, but I can't just stand idly by—"

Elijah makes a move like he's about to say something, but she unfolds herself from his favourite armchair and stands her full height. As if her stance alone might give strength to her words. She shakes her head, puts a feather-light hand on his chest. "I'm not done yet."

Elena's fingers give away just enough warmth to be felt through the fabric of his shirt, so he doesn't need to look down to know she's still holding him in place. Her voice is still and her eyes cut through glass. "I told you that day that I wished there was something I could do. Well, I found a way. I'm doing it."

For the longest moment, Elijah says nothing. Then, ever so gently, he cups Elena's hand in his and their intertwined fingers hover in the small space set in stone between them. That's all their made of – the briefest touch, the slide of skin against skin, a look weighed down with words he sometimes wished she wouldn't say. He runs his thumb down the inside of her wrist, the spot where he knows he can break if he just shifts the placement of his thumb ever so slightly.

"Elijah," she says, but the words don't reach his ears.

His thumb stills. "Leave it, Elena."

"I can't." She doesn't apologize.

.

.

.

_Tick, tock, tick, tock, tick—_

"What were you thinking?" Klaus hands are rougher than necessary as he scrubs Amelia down, and the dog whimpers.

Caroline watches him work, her feet dangling in midair as she sits on the sink, lathering soap up her arms. Bubbles and blood swirl down the drain of the bathtub, but still the red won't wash away. Klaus gives her a resentful look, but tosses her the stronger soap anyway. "I wasn't," Caroline answers honestly, catching the soap in between her wet fingers.

"That seems to be a common occurrence around here." Amelia shakes her shaggy wet fur and Caroline ducks away from the spray squealing, but Klaus stays put and doesn't stop rubbing the dog down until she's dry. She gives Klaus a lick, nudges Caroline's shin with her nose, and scratches the door to be let out. And then it's just Klaus and Caroline.

Caroline goes back to washing the blood off her neck, but then Klaus is standing before her, lifting her chin up with one hand and holding a wet cloth in the other. Caroline frowns and jerks her face away from his. "I can do it."

Klaus' calloused fingers are tangled in her curls at her nape as he cleans her neck. "Let me," he says brusquely. Caroline stops her fidgeting and lets out a sharp huff through her nose. Their eyes never meet.

"You're angry," she says, and he almost rolls his eyes—_you think?_ he seems to say, the way his hand never stills. I'm sorry, she wants to say, but she's not. Perhaps Klaus knows this, in the way her shoulders stay rigid and hunched as he cleans her off.

Despite the hard look in his eyes, Klaus' hands start to move slowly, never scrubbing too hard, and she starts to relax to his touch. His other hand moves from the base of her neck to the curve of her ears, his thumb circling the faint rose of her cheeks. The front of her shirt is sopping wet and it seeps into his own shirt as he leans closer to wash the blood off of her chest. His frown deepens – there's so much blood – but still he says nothing, as though the grim set of his mouth would not allow it. And then his fingers whisper at the buttons of her shirt, and he pulls back. But only slightly.

There's still blood to be washed away underneath the flimsy cotton separating her breasts from his fingers, but Klaus makes no move. His eyes sweep across the soft swell of her breast, the way her curls frame her neck. They linger for a moment on that dimple in her cheek when she bites her lip a certain way, and counts the light dusting of freckles across her nose.

The steam from the hot water rushing out of the golden taps starts to wrap around them like a veil, and seems to amplify the sounds of Klaus' breathing. His inhales are longer, his exhales heavier. Caroline counts the rise and fall of his chest, and there were eighty-two altogether before Klaus finally lifts his eyes to meet hers.

Her hands—when had she placed them on his arms?—move down, cold skin against the thick wool of his sweater, until her fingers are wrapping around his wrists. Klaus nods curtly, starts to pull his hands away—but Caroline's steel grip keeps them there. She coaxes his fingers into undoing her buttons, and he does slowly, one by one. Her shirt droops away, revealing the lace of her black bra against cream skin.

Klaus swallows and studies the way she's looking at him from under her eyelashes, trying to find some answer in them. A moment later, he does.

Klaus leans in. Caroline closes her eyes.

.

.

.

_Tick, tock, tick, tock, tick, tock—_

"Well, off you go," Kol says. Both their necks are craned from looking up at the name of the driving academy bent into wrought iron and rusted from years of service.

"Aren't…" Rebekah trails off, and she has to clear her suddenly dry throat. "Aren't you coming in with me?"

Kol offers a small smile, and Rebekah knows the answer is no. He shivers suddenly in the cold air, and Rebekah fusses with his jacket and makes sure the collar is upturned to protect his neck. Never mind the fact that Elijah had appeared just as they were leaving, and made them bundle up in sweaters and coats and every scarf he could find in the house.

"It's cold outside," he'd said.

Behind him, Elena watches them. She smiles at Rebekah, and Rebekah had tried her hardest, but the returning smile simply would not come. She turns away instead. "Wish me luck."

The finger that Elijah brushes just under her chin is warm, and she remembers to straighten her back. An Original must always stand tall. She smiles up at him. Even at her tallest, he still towers above her.

The morning light streams in through the open window and illuminates Elijah's eyes, and for a moment Rebekah thinks she sees Finn before her.

"About a tonne of it," Kol says waspishly, and the moment passes.

Now, Kol isn't as cutting. Perhaps the thirty-minute walk from home had drained the snark out of him, but Rebekah finds she tires easily these days as well. She hugs her coat closer. "I can do this," she says, mostly to herself.

"You can," Kol agrees, surprising her. She peeks at him to see if he's mocking her, but he looks quite serious. "You make me proud, little sister."

"But I haven't even gone in yet," she says in a wonder.

"I'm not talking about that." Kol picks a piece of ivy from the brick wall he'd been leaning against. "It's just…" He screws his eyes against the sudden wind that picks up, and takes a breath. "Twelve more days."

Rebekah tilts her head to the side, eyebrows crinkling. "Kol…"

"Oh no, Bekah. I'm not scared."

"Then?"

"Quite the opposite, actually." Kol looks up at her with an inscrutable look. "Would you kill me if I said I was kind of excited?"

Rebekah rolls her eyes, _You're already dying_. "Sometimes I don't understand you."

"Henrik's been waiting for a thousand years for us." Kol shrugs, trying to play up his nonchalance, but Rebekah sees the way his eyes shine. He quickly blinks them away. "He's always been the good one. The patient one. Out of all of us monsters."

Rebekah is quiet. She thinks of endless summers of dried grass and sweet honey, of Henrik laughing in her ear, of Finn lifting her high up in the air, of Elijah leaning back against a tree and saying (almost wistfully): "One day, I will build a contraption fit for all of us, something that will allow us to soar with the birds."

"As high as Rebekah is going." Henrik points to her and runs circles around Finn's knees. Kol chases after him, while Nik joins Elijah under the tree, already drawing up models of Elijah's imagery in his mind.

She looks back at her brother, feeling an ache in her chest made worse by the memory of Nik knocking on her bedroom door last night to check on her.

"Are you ready for tomorrow?" he asked, leaning against her doorframe. Rebekah stops frowning at the driving manual Stefan had lent her long enough to nod at Nik.

The way Nik is regarding her fondly makes her want to curl back against her silken sheets and pull him down with her, the way they used to lie in the hay and count the stars at night. Of course, they'd had to sneak out—Mikael hated when Nik brought her out anywhere past sundown. That man had put the fear of God into her brother, long after they'd stopped believing in a God. The idea of an eternal separation used to make her mind bleed for a chance to turn back time and undo all wrong, but now it was all she and her siblings were grasping at. Silently, secretly, whispered quietly to the stars and traced into their pillows as they fell asleep.

An eternal separation from Mikael, from running, from pain. An eternity with her siblings. _Always and forever_ is what Rebekah smiles into her pillow for. Kept to herself, revealed to none. But then she looks into Nik's eyes and sees the same secret in his.

Aren't we a pair, he had once said.

Her brother's voice brings her back to the cold autumn day standing underneath the sign of Mystic Fall's Driving Academy. He's looking at her, and smiling. "Say, after you're done. Do you want to—?"

Kol's question is cut short when a portly man waddles up to them in the blue of the Driving Academy's uniform. "Rebekah Mikaelson?" he huffs. At Rebekah's nod, he huffs a bit more and tugs on the red whiskers hanging from his chin. "Your brother called ahead. You were supposed to be her twenty minutes ago." Huff. "Anyway. You're up."

Rebekah casts Kol a last look, a helpless one, before being whisked away. Kol can do nothing but wave good bye.

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_Tick, tock, tick, tock, tick, tock—_

Stefan's foot won't stop jiggling.

Damon looks up from the book he's reading and tries not to roll his eyes. "You've done all you can, brother."

"Somehow it feels like it isn't enough."

"Well that—" Damon heaves himself out of his armchair and walks over to Stefan. The hand he places on Stefan's shoulder seems to calm him down a touch. "—is how you know you've done more than enough."

Stefan doesn't answer, but he doesn't shake off Damon's hand either.

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_Tick, tock, tick, tock, tick, tock, tick—_

"So take it."

The spell book is still on the coffee table, in the middle of Elijah and Elena. She looks up, blinking.

"You want it so badly." He leans forward to slide the book towards her with one finger. "Take it. May it suit your needs."

"Elijah," Elena starts, but it's not like she can deny it. She does want the grimoire. She takes it into her small hands and it fills up her whole lap. Looking up, she sees Elijah has his back to her, looking out the window. Elena leaves the grimoire on the table to go to him. As she rests her forehead in between his shoulder blades, and she can feel some of the tenseness leave him in a shuddering exhale. "But."

There's an almost wounded expression on her face, but of course Elijah can't see. "Whatever it is you find, whatever…" She's pretty sure his mouth is curled into an almost-sneer, "…_cure_ you find for us—just leave it at that. I don't want you doing anything beyond that extent. Do you promise me?"

Against his back, Elena sighs, but Elijah says again, harder this time: "Promise me."

"I make no promises," Elena says, just as firmly as he. Elena can feel his muscles tense again. "Look, Elijah—I know what I'm doing," she says, and suddenly she finds herself with her back pressed against the bookshelf, her nose buried in his smooth shirt. His chest feels solid despite the thrashing of his heartbeat.

"Good," is what he says before brushing his nose in the column of her neck. He can still smell the lavender on her. "Because I don't quite know what I'm doing."

Her fingers bury themselves in his shoulders as her head rolls back, and it's all heavy breathing and rough shoving as hands find hair and teeth meet skin. Half of Elijah's buttons are already missing, ripped from the fabric, when Elena's lips finally find his. Her tongue doesn't shy away from his, but as much as she tears her fingers into his shirt he would not let up the grip he has of her against the books. Elijah has his knee pushed between her legs to hoist her up, and when Elena bites down on his lower lip he lets out a quiet groan.

And then she pushes away, slightly breathless, but unfazed. "I have work to do," she tells him, before scooping the grimoire up into her arms and leaving in a cloud of dark hair and lilac perfume. Elijah lets out a note of laughter and finds his buttons.

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_Tick, tock, tick, tock, tick, tock, tick, tock—_

"And now." Huff. "We come to the last segment." Huff. "Of your test."

The car is by the side of the circuit, Rebekah wearing an expression of triumph at having completed it with only two cardboard people being run over—

"Now remember, Rebekah," Stefan says as he draws the circuit out in purple on the whiteboard. "You can run over a maximum of three cardboard people. Then you're out."

"What I don't get," Rebekah points out, "is why it's okay to run over people at all."

Stefan caps the whiteboard marker and smirks. "Two is okay in a town where, uh, animal attacks frequent. Three, on the other hand—"

"Three is _murder_," Damon finishes for them, viciously slashing the air with a pink marker.

—but other than that, zero casualties. She'd gone, slowly but surely up the hill, had no trouble at all in getting the car to start, and even had a chance to pull the emergency break without wrenching it out of the floor of the car. Maybe, she thinks, just maybe, that modern-day cars were better after all. Not at all like Klaus' useless little flimsy tinbox of a carriage. Maybe she was a pretty good driver. A better driver than how dumb Stefan and Klaus were letting on.

Until her instructor utters the next word.

"Park," the portly man huffs, and try as she might, but Rebekah can't stop the jerk of the car as she coaxes it awake with the turn of the ignition key. And if he wasn't pleased with the way she drove, she'll never know, since all he did was huff or puff and occasionally inhale. The inside of the car smelled like the inside of an old, unused inhaler, and from the rearview mirror hung those fuzzy red and black dices that were so gawdy she had to stop herself from cringing when they swung into her face from yet another one of her jerky stops.

"_Park_," he huffs more insistently, and Rebekah unleashes her death grip upon the steering wheel. Had her supernatural vamp powers still been intact, she might have ripped the steering wheel right from the dashboard. By sheer willpower and a lot of bargains under her breath—I promise I won't touch Elijah's film noirs I promise I won't help Kol draw moustaches on Klaus' painting I promise I won't blame it all on Kol afterwards oh please just let me get this right please please please—she manages to drive the little car straight and smooth into the yellow box.

Her instructor huffs, but marks a big blue tick on his clipboard—but then he realizes she isn't done.

.

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.

"Good, Bek," Kol finds himself commending under his breath. Rebekah's driving manual is open before him, and his eyes squint through a pair of binoculars as he watches his sister drive. She'd done well so far, only marking up two strikes against her. Kol figures that since she's one trial away from her driver's license, she couldn't possibly do any more damage. He's feeling pretty good about her prospects, even whistles a merry little tune under his breath—until, as if some higher power wanted to smite Rebekah, the car rolled an inch into the yellow line.

Growling out a curse, Kol whips out his phone.

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_Tick, tock, tick, tock, tick, tock, tick, tock, tock—_

Caroline will always hear it—the beat of his heart as skin slides against skin, as his sweat mingles with hers, as her feverish kisses melt away into softer ones and as his breathing becomes more insistent, more urgent. The beat of his heart as she bites into his shoulder to stop from screaming, the small lull afterwards when he buries his face into the crook of her neck. Klaus breathes her name when she falls apart under him, and even after that, when she's tracing lazy patterns onto his back, pressing her lips against the dew of his skin, marking his skin the way he's marked hers.

He's looking at her like she's some kind of miracle all wrapped up in his sheets, her naked form outlined by Egyptian cotton. He tells her he wants to draw her and she makes fun of him, blowing him a playful kiss. Her laughter burns right through him.

His phone rings from across the room, a familiar tune. Klaus recognizes it as Kol's assigned ringtone, and sighs exasperatedly. "One moment, love," he says, and he's gone and back again in a flash. Caroline hears Kol's voice as though he's right in the room with them, and she giggles to herself, thinking of his bewildered expression should he step in that very moment.

But then her laughter stops when she hears the panic in his voice. Kol's proclamations of _You need to come quick_ is cut short as Klaus hangs up and gets dressed in a hurry.

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_Tick, tock, tick, tock, tick, tock, tick, tock, tick, tock—_

Honestly, in all his years of teaching he had never encountered a bimbo as dumb as that one.

"My kid almost rammed us through a wall," Carl complains from behind his mug, coffee cold and bitter and black. "Whatchu got, Hank?"

Hank huffs into his paperwork. "They didn't come in through the." Huff. "Normal agency. Thinkin' I can." Huff. "Push for a couple hundred dollars more." Huff. "Kid's got no clue."

The two of them guffaw. (Or rather, one of them does. The other just huffs and wheezes.)

"So you gonna pass her or what?" Carl asks, setting down his mug. Coffee stains the corners of his lips.

Hank the Huffer grins a devilish one. "Depends on how much she's willing to pass for."

"Is that so?"

Hank and Carl both turn, their smirks freezing on their faces. Three men are standing in their doorway, one in a suit and a menacing tilt to his lips; one regarding them in an alarming manner, his hand rubbing against the scruff of his chin; one with something long and solid propped on his shoulder—a baseball bat?

"Who—" Huff. "—are—" He doesn't get to finish his sentence, because the one with all the beads is already before him, yanking him to his feet.

The one in the suit strides towards him, head tilted back, eyes a cold shade of amber. "I'm compelled to make your friend here drive one of those cars over your lower back."

The one with the baseball bat smirks. "Slowly."

"Ah, you're forgetting, brother—compulsion isn't exactly up our alley anymore," the one with his hands wrapped around his collar smiles at him then, and it chills him to the bone. What kind of man has dimples in his cheeks when he strangles another?

"All the more fun."

What kind of man even smiles when he has his hands around someone's neck? Hank and Carl exchange a fearful glance, wide-eyed and shaking.

"Who—_what_ are you?" Carl manages to choke out.

"We're the Mikaelsons," the one in the suit says genially.

"And it's nothing personally," the one with the baseball bat adds. He walks up to Hank, whose neck is still locked in a death trap. "It's just family business."

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_Tick, tock, tick, tock, tick, tock, tick, tock, tick, tock, tick—_

Rebekah slams her palm down on the horn as she sees her brothers approaching, and when they all tumble into the car she tries to muster up the words, but all she can manage is a silent scream. Her brothers faces loom before hers—Kol's goofy grin, Elijah's eyes crinkling up in pride, and Klaus with a smile so wide it looked like someone's slashed his dimples into his cheeks—ruffling her hair, stroking her cheek, patting her shoulder.

Her instructor had been gone for a very long time, and she'd begun to feel worried, but then out of nowhere he had shuffled up to her and shoved the documents into her arms. He hadn't puffed even one bit when he'd said, "Congratulations—you passed."

"I passed?" Rebekah repeated with numb disbelief. "From the way you looked earlier I thought—you didn't say anything!"

"Too dumb with joy," he says, and wipes tears from the corner of his eyes. Rebekah is so touched she doesn't notice him limping.

Kol's grin is as wide as hers, if not wider. "I knew you could do it."

Rebekah's eyes fall to the bat in Kol's loose grip. "Why do you have a…?"

"We went batting earlier," Klaus says easily as Elijah pulls down his rolled-up sleeves. He doesn't have to ask, but seeing the look on her face makes him ask anyway: "So you passed?"

"I did!" Her smile is sunshine and elation held in place with clear lip gloss, and her eyes glow as if she were going to live forever. The papers on the dashboard keep the sad truth of it at bay, and she allows a lone tear to slip from her eye before quickly brushing it away.

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_Tick, tock, tick, tock, tick, tock, tick, tock, tick, tock, tick, tock—_

It's near midnight when Elena finally throws her pillow across the room in frustration. She'd been at this for nearly eight hours now, matching the runes up to the dictionary she'd "borrowed" from Alaric and wearing her phone out from all the Googling. She throws herself back down on her bed, staring up at her ceiling. When she closes her eyes, all she sees are digits and symbols she can't understand.

It's not fair. She turns on her side and curls in on herself, trying to will away the pictures swimming beneath her closed eyelids. It's not fair, she thinks again, and her eyes burn with unshed tears. She buries her face deeper into her pillows, but her forehead knocks against the old leather of the grimoire.

Out of childish abandon, she swipes at it with a groan, but winces when her finger gets caught on the edge of the pages and scarlet blossoms from the cut. She pinches the cut closed with a tissue she grabs from her bedside table, her head never leaving her pillows.

But then she sits up, her breathing shallow. She glances down at her cut finger, still wrapped in the tissue, then to the grimoire, her eyes wide and darting. It couldn't be that simple—it just couldn't.

Could it?

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**tbc**

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so here we are. with one more chapter to go. i can hardly believe it. i feel like i can't thank you enough. i wouldn't have ever been able to do this without you.

i'd love to know what you think of this (long-overdue) update.


	11. come lay with me on the ground

**Here we are. The big ending—and it really is big, _almost 9k words_.**

**I'm not going as far as to demand you reread the previous chapters, but it would certainly make me very happy, since I haven't updated this in _forever_, and I just want to make sure you don't have a tough time following the timeline and whatnot. But if I'm lucky enough to have people who loved this so much they committed scenes and inside jokes to memory, just soldier on.**

**Well, here we go… this one's for all of you.**

* * *

><p>—<p>

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**xi**

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—

They throw another ball.

It's extravagant and totally unplanned, but Rebekah comes home from another day of playing at normalcy to find Elijah giving explicit instructions to the hired workers on how to properly dust the delicate chandelier. Kol is mopping the floor with a miserable look on his face—

("Didn't we hire people to do this?" Kol grouses as Klaus passes by with an armful of stained brushes, just as sour-faced as he is.

Amelia barks and wags her tail, licking up any spots Kol might have missed, which he pretends to be annoyed by, but Elijah sees him sneaking her a treat when everyone's back is turned)

—and Klaus has been ordered to put all his dark oil paintings away and clean up his art studio.

Caroline comes and helps dress her up in gold and puts flowers in her hair. Rebekah opens her eyes after Caroline allows her to, and doesn't shy away from the mirror. They laugh and shimmy and twirl and even after Caroline leaves to get herself ready, she still studies her reflection, equally pleased and perplexed by how she looks—different, yet just the same.

When Elijah calls her down to the sound of champagne flutes clinking together and soft music swelling under the sound of chatter, she places a soft hand on the oiled Rosewood banister ready to float down the grand staircase when voice calls out, stopping her.

She turns around, slightly annoyed, and it's Elena.

Elena's dressed in black lace, and Rebekah doesn't know why, but it infuriates her. "Wearing black to my ball?" she asks snootily, not waiting for an answer. "Charming." She's about to turn her back on Elena, but the doppelganger wench calls out to her again.

"_What_?" she snaps, her fingernails digging into wood. "People are waiting for me."

Elena bites her lower lip and glances to one of the closed doors behind her. It's her room. The fact that Elena knows her place around the mansion well makes Rebekah's blood boil. "Could you come with me?"

Rebekah wants to ask why she should, but Elena has this look in her eyes, and Rebekah just can't place it. Despite hearing Elijah call for her, insistently this time, Rebekah leaves her post by the top of the stairs and follows Elena into the dark.

—

"I can't, Elena."

Caroline's face is pushed close to hers, dark shadows playing across her face, making her seem almost menacing with the glare of the flashlight under her shin. The covers are pulled tight and taut over their heads, and they are whispering.

"I told Klaus I'd respect any decision he'd make," she says.

"Even if it hurts him," she says.

"Even if it hurts me," she says, but this time her eyes flit away.

Elena understands more than anyone, but she's seen too much, gone too far, but felt too little. She hugs her teddy closer to her chest and closes her eyes. "Yes, but—"

"It's something we don't even understand, alright?" Caroline whispers fiercely. "The Originals' bond. They came to this decision together, and I think they're leaving with it. Together."

"But I figured—"

"You meant well." Caroline's face softens. "Remember in kindergarten? When that little bitch Brad Woods was shoving Bonnie around in the sandbox? You wouldn't let up on him until he'd left all of us alone." Caroline smiles at the memory. "It took months. You're the most stubborn person I've ever met, Elena."

"Then you know I won't just let this go," Elena says, so soft even Caroline has to strain her ears to listen. The blonde sighs and says nothing. They lie that way, cold feet tangled in warm ones, their noses almost touching together, until both of them fall asleep.

When Elena wakes up the next day, Caroline's side of the bed is already made. Already at school, no doubt. Elena stretches up to go shower, but then she spots it. The small vial filled with something thick and red on her dresser. She lifts it up with careful hands: the blood hits the morning light and gleams.

—

"Really." Rebekah looks down at the two vials clasped in each of Elena's hands with an incredulous look on her face. "This is your solution?"

The room below them is a swirl of sweeping gowns and golden light and tinkling laughter. Over here in her room the lights have been put out, no room for imagery. The hearth has been put out and Rebekah shivers from the cold, from anger – she's not sure which one.

"Vampire blood," Elena says, her voice shaking. "And mine. I—I'm not sure if… just, drink them, one after the other, stay here with us, _live_—"

"And if it doesn't work?" Rebekah demands, stepping closer. "This might be some fun experiment for you, but this is my life. My family's life. This is our choices, and your help is _not_ one of them." She shoves the vials out of Elena's hand, expecting them to shatter, but they merely thud on the carpet.

"It's worth a shot," Elena insists, but it's weak at best as she bends down to pick up the vials again.

"I am not just _worth a shot_, Elena," Rebekah air-quotes. "I am everything your blood is made of. I am bigger than this house, bigger than this town, bigger than this curse." She shakes her head and backs away. "I'm sorry."

Elena blinks, surprised. "I am too."

For a moment, sardonic laughter fills the crevices of silence in the room. "No, I'm sorry you feel like you have to swoop in and save the day every time."

Heat rushes to Elena's cheeks. "And _I'm_ sorry that you feel like you're above help. Open your eyes, Rebekah. Yes, I get that you're royalty, but put down your sword and crown and just _see_ what you've always failed to before." She's shaking. She's angry too. "Our lives don't have to be like this. I'm not always out to hurt you."

"You've been remarkably bad at proving otherwise," Rebekah spits. All this scowling is probably ruining her eye makeup, but she can't help but want to tug at her hair and just scream whenever Elena Gilbert is around. Here she is, bright and bursting with gold on the night of her ball, a night meant to celebrate _her_, but here she is, mind wrapped around Elena Gilbert yet again.

Fuck Elena Gilbert.

"I hope you live a happy and long life," Rebekah begins, lifting her chin, "because that's how I intend on living out the rest of mine. So either you dance or you leave. It's your choice, and certainly not mine."

Elena looks crestfallen. "Rebekah—"

Rebekah sweeps out of the room. Her grown trails behind her with an air of finality.

—

It's weird.

Stefan and Klaus are sitting right in the middle of the vast Mikaelson theater: Stefan with his feet up and Klaus with a hand placed too casually on the side of his face. It occurs to both of them that they haven't so much as been in the same room together save for Rebekah's driving lessons, and considering what happened last time – all the murdering and the scheming and the burning and the screaming – yeah, it's weird.

But they're drinking, so that gives them something to do. The movie playing goes on for a while, scene after scene unfolding before them, and they're nearing the end of it before Klaus finally breaks the silence.

"When all of this…" Klaus pauses, before resuming in a level voice, "When all of this is over. This house…"

Stefan watches Klaus battle his sentence. Best to let him finish it.

Klaus takes a deep gulp of his liquor and leans back, his eyes on the ceiling. "I want you to take it down. The garage, the greenhouse—all of it. The stables, the fountain up front. The trees." Klaus pauses again, reconsidering. "Maybe not the trees. Finn seemed to have a certain fondness for them."

Stefan looks around them, trying to imagine the place as dust and rubble and bricks crumbling beneath his feet. He can't.

"It will be as if we were never here," Klaus says, eyes still on the ceiling. He takes another swig of his drink.

"I would've thought you'd want us to remember you. The Great Originals. Leaping through dust and through time; outliving even memories."

"Stefan. Dear, naïve Stefan." Klaus props his feet up, swirling his drink around. "What do you think is going to happen to us when time runs out?"

Stefan frowns, not following, but it's alright—Klaus hadn't been expecting an answer. The hybrid's mouth is a grim smile slashed across his face, and he says, "Do you think we fade into nothing, perhaps get carried by the wind? Just disappear into oblivion?" He snorts. "I highly doubt it. In our final hours, we will be human, dying a human death. There will be no spark and there will be no bang. Our flesh will rot; our teeth will crumble and fall away. We're likely to turn to ash beneath your boots."

Stefan turns his face away, and for a moment the room seems to be swaying.

"Not the delightful imagery you were imagining?" Klaus asks of Stefan's silence.

"So stay." When did his voice get so scratchy? "Stay here. With us."

"In this desolate little town, with no one to pray for us?" Klaus barks out a laugh. "Before Mikael's miserable life was ruled by hunting us down, he was quite the religious man. He would pray. Pray for our foul, desperate souls, even as the sun burned our skin and blood streamed from our lips."

"I guess he rubbed off on you," Stefan says with a bitter taste in his mouth from the liquor.

"I'm just lost, Stefan," Klaus admits gaily, swinging his glass in Stefan's direction. "Lost but not quite alone, and sometimes I find it's just as terrifying as being infinitely and utterly alone."

Even with the soundproof walls, Stefan hears bells chiming from somewhere in the mansion.

Somehow, Klaus hears it too. He stands and shrugs on the jacket he'd draped over the back of his seat in one swift movement and smiles at Stefan. "The guests are here. Let's make ourselves look presentable, eh?"

Stefan's hand moves to touch Klaus' shoulder as he passes, and yeah—it's weird.

—

The champagne tastes lovely on her tongue.

She feels like she's made of bubbles, effervescent, rising right off the toes of her shoes when she's dancing, held at arm's length one moment and then drawn to Klaus' chest the next. He's warmer than he's ever been, and all the dancing has got his blood pumping—she can hear it rushing in his veins, thunderous, glorious.

He's panting a little too, a delight to watch as she twirls around him—

and then she catches sight of Elena. The events of this morning comes back at her in a rush, and she misses Klaus' awaiting arms and plants her face right in his collarbones, and not gracefully either.

"You alright, love?"

"Yeah," she says over the music and smiles, but she's actually still trained on Elena and the way her smile strains to shine the way her hair falls over her shoulder. She's dancing with Elijah with swan-like grace, far from the way Klaus and Caroline fight on who gets to lead, with their hands grasped in each other's so tight she doesn't quite know where her fingers end and he begins.

The beads on Elena's dress glint red when the lights burn just a little lower to suit the smooth transition into a much slower song, and Caroline calms down, takes a deep breath and rests her head on Klaus' shoulder.

His lips brush against her earlobe just _so_, and she can't help shivering.

"I helped Elena with a project this morning," she murmurs into the curve of his neck. Klaus holds her closer when her voice hums through him. When she looks up, she can see the smallest peek of his teeth as he smiles, the space where, before, a fang would have peeked through.

"Phase three of Operation: Dick?"

"You totally know it's Operation: D.I.C.K.," Caroline chides playfully, where days ago she would have picked a fight over it. Maybe it's the champagne, or maybe it's just the buzz of being in a beautiful room surrounded by beautiful people that she feels mellowed out tonight. "It's more of a life project. Like picking-out-which-college-you're-going-to huge. Except not really?"

Klaus' eyebrows furrow in confusion. "Come again?"

Caroline shakes her head, curls swaying lightly. She'd pulled it up into an elegant bun, but all the dancing had caused it to come lose. She'd wanted to fix it, but Klaus had said he liked it that way, so. "Never mind. I'm just having second thoughts, that's all."

"Caroline Forbes, having second thoughts about helping someone?"

She jumps, definitely not expecting a voice that close to her ear. Kol smirks, pleased as he is that he'd unsettled her. "That will be the day."

Caroline jumps, not expecting Kol's voice to be so close to her ear.

Kol grins at her startled expression, delighted at all of this, and sidles even closer, if that's possible. It disrupts the dance she is sharing with Klaus, but maybe that was his plan all along when he dips his head and holds his hand out. "Mind if I cut in?"

Klaus looks like he very much minded, but Rebekah stamps up to them at that very moment and plucks Caroline's hand off of Klaus' shoulder.

"I just had a _thoroughly exhausting_ row, and Stefan's nowhere to be seen," Rebekah informs her brother haughtily. "Dance with me before I make a scene at my own damn ball."

Kol shoots them a _What do you know?_ look, rather mockingly, while Klaus sighs, resigned.

Exasperated, Caroline accepts Kol's extended hand, but makes sure they dance as far away from Klaus and Rebekah as possible. She'd expected him to be heavy with quips, but all he does is compliment her dress.

Caroline shoots him a smile. "I actually got to pick my own, this time."

"I thought I recognized my brother's taste in that last dress you wore," Kol says triumphantly. "You looked beautiful then, as you do now."

"Thanks," Caroline says uncertainly.

Kol chuckles, spinning her around. "Come now, Caroline. I would've thought from all those near-death experiences we had, we'd have shared a bond by now. No need for all that awkward jibber jabber."

Caroline relaxes in his arms, allowing a more genuine smile to peek through. "Let's just get this dance over with," she says, but there's no hostility there.

"First you deny helping people, and now you're refusing to let me enjoy my first dance with a beautiful lady in centuries?" Kol raises an eyebrow. "How the winds have changed."

Caroline's about to respond, but Kol's already laughing (heartily, she might add).

"I apologize," he says, but he looks more amused than he is sorry. "For a second there I sounded like my brother. Finn."

Kol's still laughing, but there's something sad about it too.

—

Bonnie's standing awkwardly to the side and looks like she wants to change her mind entirely and just leave when Stefan walks up to her with a flute of champagne.

"You look great," he tells her, but she doesn't smile.

"I'm not sure why I'm here," Bonnie says, biting her lower lip. "I pretty much secured their deaths, didn't I?"

"And yet here you are, with an invitation."

"An invitation to what exactly? An apology from me?" she snorts, fingers gripping her drink tight. "Unlikely."

"I'm not telling you to apologize." Stefan surveys the room, one hand in his pocket. "Just take it as it is. They've been kind of zen lately."

Bonnie shrugs, and they clink their flutes together.

Matt steps through the doors of the ballroom then, his suit—the same one he'd worn to the last ball—blending into the crowd, but the expression on his face very out of place. He spots Bonnie and Stefan, and his shoulders bob in relief.

"Two balls in just one month." Matt plucks a champagne flute from a passing waiter, but at Mrs. Lockwood's disapproving glance he puts it right back, and stares sullenly at the flutes in Stefan and Bonnie's hands. "They sure know how to live it up."

Stefan's smile is tight. "Sure they do."

—

It's such a tapestry of fine food and finer music, a pretty moment to be captured in photograph, but Elena finds herself steering away from the cameras at all cost.

Elijah, realizing this, slides his hand off her waist and finds himself leading her outside, through the back where there's nothing but miles and miles of green and trees, illuminated just so by twinkling lights.

It's by far the grandest house they've ever lived in (not counting the manse back in 1492, of course) but that's not why he's going to miss this place. Elena's fingers are wrapped loosely in his, thumb brushing against each other's every so often as they step out into the dark.

"You've not got anything up your sleeve, Elena?" Elijah asks gently.

Elena smiles and walks on ahead of him. After a while she turns back, walking slowly backwards. "I'm not wearing gloves this time, Elijah." She grins, running her finger down the smooth skin of her arm. "I'm bare for the world to see."

Not bare enough, but he keeps these thoughts to himself.

"And I've come to learn… that maybe it's okay." Her hair flits about her face as she spins a slow circle around him. "I've done all I can. You'll be okay. So that means I'll be okay."

Elijah reaches a hand out to stop her, and she reaches out just the same to place his hand on her cheek. "You're leaving tomorrow. I can tell."

"You don't…" Elijah clears his throat, tries again. "You don't know that."

She shakes her head and steps closer. "You have that look in your eyes."

"What look?"

"That it's time to move on." She rests her forehead against his, and Elijah closes his eyes. "You Originals weren't made for small towns, she says. You get restless, you leave. It's in your nature."

Soft laughter at the truth in her words, and he presses his lips to hers. "Is this your version of a good bye?"

Elena doesn't answer. Instead, still walking backwards, she guides him until the back of her dress scratches against the rough bark of a tree. The kiss deepens—she's hungry for him and him her, his hands in her hair and her fingers clutching at his shirt, ripping away his bowtie and picking at his buttons. Her fingers scratch down the skin of his chest and her legs find a way to wrap around his hips; the sound he makes against her lips is not entirely unfounded.

Dazed, breathless, and everything in between, he pushes her hair away from her neck and thinks what a _curse_ it is, to desire the things that will destroy him in the end.

—

Rebekah leans over the banister and giggles, heady with champagne in her veins. She can hear Stefan's echoing footfalls as he follows her up the winding staircase, and she holds the nearly-empty bottle of Krug to her chest as she tries not to trip over her feet.

The guests have long left and their laughter echo through the hallways as she runs, and he chases. She's breathless by the time they make it to the empty ballroom. She doesn't bother turning on the lights as she traipses across the vast room to the balcony.

Stefan's outlined in silver in the moonlight and she loves it—he looks like he's stepped right out of one of Nik's paintings.

Rebekah's perched on the stone railing, chilled to the bone. Her feet dangle, and she kicks off her thousand-dollar shoes. She's still trying to catch her breath.

I wonder, Rebekah says, if I fall now, would it kill me?

If I just let go of this railing, Rebekah says.

Would it be like in the movies?

"A fall from grace, a crack in the head," Rebekah says, and then giggles.

"You're morbid when you're drunk," Stefan tells her, his eyes dark. "It's fascinating."

"We're dying by my mother's design," Rebekah says, daring him to come closer. "I wonder what she would think if I took it into my own hands."

Stefan shakes his head. "Don't let go, Rebekah."

She signs, leaning back, and he just manages to catch her by her waist. She laughs at this, a tinkle in the night. "Don't be daft, Stefan—I wasn't going to jump." She cranes her neck to look up at the night sky, a wistfulness in her eyes. "Just enjoying the night while I can."

Stefan lowers his head to her neck, but she stops him with a gloved hand. "Don't kiss me. Not just yet." Slipping out of his arms, she takes hold of his hand and leads him back inside. "I've something to show you."

—

"Where do you think they're going?" Kol passes a flask to Damon, eyes peering through his binoculars.

While the horses have long been led away to their stables, the carriage still remained outside. They're cooped up inside with enough liquor and cheese puffs to last them several nights of espionage.

Damon pulls a face, _euch_. "I'd rather not find out. And it's _kind of_ weird that you want to."

Kol laughs darkly. "Damon, you know nothing of how my family works."

And _that_, Damon stabs a finger in Kol's direction, is another thing he would have been happy to live not knowing.

Anyway, Damon says, why does this feel eerily like a farewell party?

"Maybe it is." Kol shrugs easily. "This would be my first. Quite lively."

Damon kicks his feet up and hunkers down. "I'm planning on making this my last. I have had enough of balls to last my lifetime."

Besides, he adds, do you know how much dry-cleaning costs?

"Nope," Kol says. "These are just trivial things that belong to your trivial time. Hey—don't hog the whiskey."

"So I was right—there _is_ some part of you hoarding away pleasure from this." Damon raises a fist, triumphant. "Like a sneaky, twisty chipmunk."

"To die would be an awfully big adventure," Kol says simply. It sounds like a toast.

It also sounds like Kol's been watching one movie too many. Damon claps his hand on Kol's back and snitches the binoculars. "Ooh, they're totally in her room now."

—

It's in the corner of my room, she says, and lets him find it.

It's not the flickering candles she'd lit or the way the bed looked especially inviting, don't be a perv, she tells him in a slightly breathless voice, cheeks pink and eyes bright.

"This," she says, and nudges him towards an open suitcase.

Rebekah looks a little bit excited, a lot scared, her eyes shining. He doesn't think he's ever seen her look so alive.

Curious.

Her suitcase is filled to the brim with coats, hats, espadrilles, sunglasses, spare sunglasses, spare-spare sunglasses, with lip gloss to match her bikini and lipstick to go with a little black dress. Stefan looks from the dress to Rebekah to the dress again, touches it with a light finger.

"Going somewhere?"

"I don't know, a drive maybe. It's just an overnight-trip thing." She doesn't meet his eyes.

Stefan sighs and zips up her suitcase for her. It didn't look like an overnight-trip thing to him nor did it look like trip at all. It looked like she was skipping town altogether, not that he blamed her. He supposes, given the chance, he'd up and leave as well, go on a round-the-world trip, those rock-hard pretzels in New York or those fish sticks in Penang, the ones with the sweet-spicy sauce. Maybe live in a house by the sea, no ambitions, no need to prove a single damn thing to anybody, nothing but radiant happiness.

He'd be so damned happy he'd probably have to go on another Eat Pray Love venture to redefine happiness.

"You're being quiet," Rebekah says (just as quietly). "Not thinking of growing another beard, are you?"

It sounds like a joke, but he can hear the minute threat in her voice.

Really. Stefan knows by now.

"Nah," he says, and tilts her chin up with his index finger. She looks expectant. Her breathing's uneven, her lips parted just the slightest. "Just thinking what a pleasure it has been, driving with you."

(He wants to remember her like this, but he also wants to remember the way the sun shone and the trees moved the day he ran into her—after so many days of running into her—somewhere in Mystic Falls, looking forlorn.

"You lost?"

"No," she snaps, side-eyeing him. He's in his car, rolling inch by inch to match the pedestrian pace she's going.

"Every time I pass by I see you wandering around."

"Nik and Elijah are too busy to drive me to school," she tells him, but it doesn't come out catty as much as miserable.

Stefan rolls his eyes. "Why don't you just drive yourself?"

Rebekah's eyes flash and she spins on the heels of her flats to fully glare at him. It's rather frightening, especially how low her voice is when she hisses, "I just woke up from a 90-year slumber, do you really think I know how to drive?"

"Maybe you should _learn_," Stefan retorts.

Rebekah raises an eyebrow. Haughty. Challenging. "Are you offering?"

Stefan regards her coolly. "Maybe I am.")

Rebekah clicks her tongue, breaking through his reverie. "Well, aren't you going to kiss m—?"

"Getting to that," he murmurs, and despite fate, circumstance and a treacherous curse, when their lips meet it's like they are kissing for the first time all over again.

—

The drive is silent, without even Rebekah's slow jazz music filling the air. Elijah has his arm propped on the door, and in the backseat, Klaus is busy putting the finishing touches on his now-filled sketchbook, and Kol tries to initiate an overly-enthusiastic game of footsy every three minutes or so. Amelia's sitting between them, alternating between resting her head on Kol's lap or letting out a bark every time Rebekah drives past a large green sign proclaiming how far she's gone.

After a while she turns out of the highway and onto a quaint little road, shaded with trees and blanketed by the azure blue sky. The wind ripples through her hair and Klaus is scratching Amelia between the ears and Elijah has a smile playing on his lips and Kol dangles his arm out the window, letting the air graze his skin, and everything's going great, until they see a squirrel scurrying across the road. Everyone immediately stops what they're doing to zero in on Rebekah and the vice-grip she has on the steering wheel.

The car doesn't veer off the road, neither does it let out that godforsaken screech every time Rebekah brakes. It comes to a smooth stop. Rebekah's giving them a smug smile, _Hello, I've got my driver's license_, and while she checks on her lipstick in the rearview mirror, misses how Kol's mouth drops open and how Klaus' drawing hand stills. Elijah turns to look at his sister.

"Bekah," he says. Not _Rebekah_, not _sister_, but Bekah. "I think you've got it."

Amelia scampers into her lap and Rebekah tries her hardest not to cry, but she does anyway.

—

Kol pulls a wicker basket out of the trunk and plops it down onto the red-and-white checkered blanket (of course), and tells his siblings that Damon had packed a picnic for them—

("And I really did pack it," Damon tells him almost gruffly as he thrusts it out to him. "Not because I wanted to," he adds. "No choice. Alaric's out sick."

Kol takes the basket with a curt nod, and doesn't mention how he'd seen the man walking around Mystic Falls hand in hand with that Fell doctor, looking as healthy as can be.)

—and starts setting out the food on the minute cliff. The sandwich has a crunch to it ("Doritos and peanut butter," Rebekah comments dryly after she's peeked at the contents. "My favourite."), but the strawberries are sweet and the dressing on the salad hits just right. Elijah picks up a brownie with a small smile, but sets it back down again. Amelia, in between begging for scraps, chases butterflies.

A little ways of, Ole Betsey stands solid and strong on the smooth road. Silhouetted against the afternoon sun she doesn't look defeated and battered, but rather the beauty of a carriage she had once been nearly a century ago. They all find themselves looking at it, and as the shadow of the car grows longer on the road and as their meal is finished off, Klaus fishes his car keys out of his pocket and rolls his eyes at the beaming look on Kol and Rebekah's face.

Amelia whimpers, and Klaus breaks.

"Oh, go ahead," he says with a weak imitation of a grumble. Rebekah and Kol scamper over each other in their excitement,

Kol's right hand covers Rebekah's (who covers Elijah's, who has one hand against the hood of Ole Betsey and the other on Klaus' shoulder) as they give the car one final push, Amelia barking away. The car rolls down the slight hill and bumps at the rocks peeking through the grass, and enters the lake slowly as if testing the water. Ole Betsey doesn't go quickly: the water around her splashes and bubbles, and the vinyl top even comes off. It's a scene eerily reminiscent of the sinking of Titanic (Elijah would know; he'd been there) and equally as painful—for Klaus, anyway. There's a droop to his shoulders as he flicks his car keys after her, and the arc of the key as it swings through the air to splash into the water is as good as any goodbye.

After that, there's a long silence.

There isn't much left to say.

"So… about that roadtrip," Elijah says genially as they watch Ole Betsey's front bumpers float for a fraction of a second, before finally going under in a flurry of gurgles.

Klaus crosses his arms over his chest, eyes still on the now-still surface of the water. His voice is thick when he asks, "Where to?"

"Doesn't matter." Elijah shrugs, hands in his pockets. "Kol?"

"Sounds good," Kol says agreeably. He nudges his sister with his shoulder. "Maybe we can find Finn. Drill into that thick skull of his."

"No sense in letting him go at it alone," Rebekah says, trying to match her brothers' airy tones. Amelia's ears seem to perk up in agreement.

They settle down on the grass, propped on their elbows and crossed at the ankles. The sun lowers and soon sets, basking everything in its red glow. Rebekah's about to rest her head on Elijah's shoulder, before it hits her. "How the hell are we getting back home?"

—

A phone call and a squabble later—

("It's a car service Kol, not a death march," Elijah says wearily. "Come out of the tree."

"You are utterly unlearned in the subtle art that is roadtripping," Kol snarks, his hand wrapped around Elijah's phone, which he had swiped just as Elijah was about to press CALL. "One does not _carpool_."

"…Brother, don't you think road trips entail carpooling?"

"Yes—well, I—that's not the point!" Kol's brandishing the phone. "We are not calling for any cars, or so help me I am never getting down from this tree."

Klaus, who had been sitting against aforementioned tree, drawls, "That doesn't sound half bad. Use my phone, Elijah."

Kol lets out a strangled cry and drops down on Klaus.)

—Elijah's standing at the side of the road with his thumb sticking out upwards (Kol wins).

This is ridiculous, he mutters, but Kol just grins and sticks his fingers in Amelia's mouth, making her smile as well.

"This whole running-off-into-the-sunset thing seemed awfully romantic when we actually had, you know, a _car_," Rebekah points out, swatting Kol's hands away from Amelia. She'd all but given up trying to hail a ride about an hour ago. Klaus hadn't even bothered to try.

"I swear to the higher beings above," Elijah swears to the sky, "if a car drives by I will give the entire contents of our offshore accounts to the owner."

No sooner had the words left his lips a car looms up over the swell of the road in the distance. Rebekah squints at it in the moonlight, and Kol stops messing around with Amelia's face to stop and stare.

Elijah just exhales his exasperation in one long breath.

It takes just about forever and twenty minutes for the car to reach them, and then the window rolls down to reveal—

"Matt?" Rebekah blurts out.

Even Klaus flips his sketchbook shut.

Matt, not used to being stared at so much, shifts in his seat. "You guys need a ride or something?"

"What on earth are you doing so far from home?" Rebekah asks.

"Uh, Caroline wanted fabric samples from the next town over, and—Jesus, will you guys stop staring? It feels like I'm being deputized."

"You most certainly aren't," Elijah assures him. "But you are about to be propositioned."

And this is how Matt finds himself standing on the side of the road in the oncoming twilight, blinking down dazedly at a string of numbers written on a napkin, in Elijah's neat print.

"Good bye, darling," Rebekah says, leaning out the window, but it's not for Matt—it's for Amelia, who's looking downcast, sitting obediently by Matt's dusty boots. "I'll miss you," she says thickly, fighting back tears.

She had picked Amelia up and hugged her for a long time while Elijah was calling up his accountant (who was, as it happens, also a vampire—Elijah had found him much too valuable to leave to the meddling of nature).

Klaus spends time ruffling up her fur and telling her she's a good girl, and even Kol kept clearing his throat thickly when it was his turn to say good bye.

"Get her to Stefan," Rebekah tells Matt, who just nods.

"Good bye, Rebekah," Matt says, voice gruff from the emotional turmoil in his chest. "Have—have a safe trip, I guess."

Klaus taps him on the temple as they're about to leave. "You. Don't forget."

Matt tightens his grip around Amelia's collar, just a little terrified. Of course he wouldn't.

—

Klaus gets the call about three hours later, when the stars are out and Rebekah's crammed at his side.

"_Stop the car_," he all but snarls, and Elijah curses and slams his foot down on the brake—

Rebekah is hurled against the dashboard hissing—

A dozing Kol is slammed against the partition window that separates them and the of the back of the truck, grunting something frightful.

"What is it?" Elijah sounds wary, urgent.

"Caroline called," Klaus says cheerfully and hops out of the truck before his siblings can throw him out of it. He makes sure he's a good distance away, with the crickets singing and the leaves rustling in the wind, before he answers.

"Took you long enough," her voice, made sharper by time and distance, snaps at him. Klaus stops in his tracks and rubs the back of his neck, the beginnings of a smile forming on his lips. "I got your sketchbook."

"Your friend Matthew has a bright future in the delivery service," Klaus remarks, but Caroline doesn't laugh.

"You left without saying goodbye. Seriously, Klaus?" Caroline sounds quite upset, but she's not crying or anything which kind of irks him a little, but whatever. And then she has to add: "I don't know who taught you the misconception that dramatic exits were needed in every single occurrence in life, but they were _severely_ wrong."

Oh. So she's angry.

"And—and I don't even want your sketchbook."

Maybe a little hurt.

"Caroline," Klaus says softly. "I'm sorry. Maybe you should throw it in a river."

"Maybe I should."

"Yeah, alright," Klaus says, amiable, "but before you do that, just take a look at it."

Caroline huffs, and the sound amplifies against the speakers. "Not in the mood for your moody selfies, Klaus."

"Come on, Caroline," Klaus laughs. He's started to pace. In the car, Rebekah's started glowering at him, Elijah has his sleeves rolled up, and Kol's found his way into yet another tree.

Definitely not a good sign, so he turns away.

"Fine." There's a rustling of pages. "A wolf, another wolf, some sad looking peanut, a picture of—_seriously_?"

"In my defense, you really do look beautiful when you're asleep," Klaus says of the sketch he has of her. This time, he's not smiling—the cotton in his throat does not allow it. "What else do you see?"

There's silence on the other end as she keeps fliiping, until finally—

"A map." A pause.

Klaus clears his throat. "Not just any map."

"A map of a farmhouse. With geese too, so what?"

"You know Caroline, for a girl who's determined to be on every semester's honour roll, you can be remarkably daft." Klaus glances back at his increasingly-impatient family, raising an index finger, _one moment_. "Turn the page."

Klaus closes his eyes, waiting, and then there it is. The gasp.

"Tickets to Nice?" Caroline asks. He has to strain his ears to hear her voice, hears it grow from barely above a whisper to a feverish rush.

Klaus never knew he had it in him to sound so gentle, especially in the moment he says, "So you can visit Steven. There's an extra ticket as well, should you want to bring anyone."

(And he's hoping fervently that that 'anyone' would be Stefan—he trusts Stefan. Stefan would keep those handsy locals off of Caroline, keep her safe. Not that she needs any taking care off. But seeing as he wouldn't be able to do it himself…)

"Klaus, I—thank you, so much, but I just—"

"You have to," Klaus says, gruff. "I know you have a hard time accepting gifts—_from me_—but you know what? You're just going to have to put your issues aside and take it. Something tells me there won't be much of these little surprises after this."

"There's more?" she tries to laugh, but it sounds a bit watery.

"Let's not give away all my secrets all at once." Klaus opens his eyes again and looks for something, anything at all to stare at, to alleviate the bursting he feels in his chest: he settles on the stars. With his phone pressed against his ear to the sound of Caroline just laughing and gushing away, he feels a heaviness in him that has nothing to do with the curse weakening his system.

He walks on, eyes still tracked on the sky above him, celestial and vast. Who constructed their elements, shaped their formations? Determined the birth and death of a new day, a new time when things seemed utterly hopeless, like they did only twenty-three days ago?

"Thank you, Klaus," Caroline says quietly, not a single emotion betrayed in the unwavering of her voice, her voice that, even from miles away, manages to dismantle him every time. "Thank you for – for your honesty, for everything."

"Well," Klaus says, and clears his raw throat yet again. "I'd best be off."

He's pulling his phone away from his ear when he ears her say, "No, wait—"

And so he waits. With bated breath, with his heart in his throat, with his fingers gripping his phone so tight it might shatter in his hands.

"I…" Caroline's sentence trails off in nervous laughter. He imagines her sitting on her porch, staring up at the many shades that make up the night sky. She'd never really been able to figure out what colours they were.

Klaus doesn't want to prompt her, so he finds a tree and gets comfortable leaning against it. Above him, he hears Kol snigger.

After a while, Klaus just says, "I know."

"No, you don't," Caroline says in a rush. "It's not like, a declaration of love or whatever."

Klaus nods, even though he knows she can't see him. He _knows_. By God, he does.

"But I really do—"

"I know," Klaus says again, a hard edge to his voice this time. "Caroline, I know. And I want you to know that it doesn't _matter_. It should, but it doesn't, because I am at the point of no return." He looks down at his feet, wishing he could say those little words, but he finds that he can't.

Another time, another place.

If he's lucky, another life – but let's be real now. So instead, he says, "Good night, Caroline."

"Good night, Klaus. I won't forget you."

The line goes dead.

Kol drops down from the tree, but this time next to him instead of on top. "Things went well, I hope?"

Klaus doesn't answer, just puts his phone back in his pocket (the image of Kol throwing Elijah's phone over a cliff is still fresh in his mind) and walks back to the truck. Rebekah's shivering now, but she doesn't look so angry.

Elijah just nods at him and asks if everyone's ready to go.

"Hold on a sec," Rebekah says as she scooches out of her seat. "Just going to grab my coat from my suitcase. Kol, could you bring it down for me?"

Klaus settles back in his seat, lets his eyes trail past the star-speckled patterns in the sky. He hears Rebekah gasp and asks absently, "Something wrong, Bekah?"

"Nope," his sister responds after a moment, and his trail of thought continues. Busy ruminating, he doesn't notice Rebekah shakily fish out two vials from between the layers and layers of clothes in her suitcase and quietly slip them into her coat jacket—two vials filled with blood, just enough for five people to share.

.

.

.

.

He still has the strangest urge to slam his foot on the brake when he sees a squirrel. Sometimes he even slows his car down to let it scurry past, ignoring the blaring honks and the obscene words of the drivers behind him.

Sometimes he feels her next to him, when he's driving to school. Sometimes he thinks of her when Bonnie hangs up more posters around the hallways: thinking of all the dances she'd wanted to go to but in the end, never getting to.

Sometimes Amelia pulls her head in from the window and puts her paw on his knee, like she knows.

He has to stop the car then.

—

Life goes on, Stefan learns.

(Caroline's schedule becomes more and more hectic in the last few weeks leading up to prom, insisting on making it bigger and better and brighter than the one she helped Elijah throw. Elena starts discussing Duke with Alaric, staying late at school and oftentimes being the first to reach homeroom. Damon leaves for a while, and when Stefan searches his room for clues he discovers that Damon's brought nothing but his DVD collection with him.

He leaves nothing but a note that says, _See you when I see you, brother_.)

—

Stefan finds Caroline at the field (already in her buttercup dress and her lips dolled up in red), just sitting at the bleachers, staring out at the vast green nothingness. She doesn't have her serious vampire face on (did she even have one? he wonders) which doesn't worry him, but she isn't even wearing her usual smile (which does). She's just staring.

He calls out her name but it gets carried away with the wind in its faintness. After a while, he tugs on his bowtie and bounds up the bleachers to where she's sitting, two steps at a time. She doesn't look up when he goes right up to her—doesn't say hi—but he wraps his jacket around her bare shoulders anyway, in lieu of a greeting.

"It's cold," he says, and even though she can't feel it, she hugs his jacket tighter.

He slips into the seat one bleacher down, his elbows just grazing the toe of her lace-up heels. The breeze picks up and as the sun sinks further down the sky, she still hasn't said a single word.

He considers reaching for her hand, but he's not really the hand-holding type—not anymore, he thinks. But the way her hand is _just_ peeking out of his jacket sleeve, curled loosely like an invitation, becomes a stitch in his side and eats away at his mind.

Tunnel vision, he recalls absently. Caroline had always said he had tunnel vision.

Mentally kicking himself, he reaches for her hand.

It's cold.

—

"Is there something you need?" she asks eventually, tracing circles on the back of his hand. It's not an uncomfortable sensation, he finds.

"Just to talk," he says, and leans back casually. "I'm surprised you didn't go all out. Just tumble out of a limo dazzling everybody."

Caroline offers a small smile (he surreptitiously taps his knee with a triumphant finger at this) and says, "I'm surprised you did."

"Only because it's all you ever talked about. The dress you've dreamed of all your high-school life." He gestures at her dress, _va va voom,_ "a corsage made of your favourite flowers, even if it doesn't match aforementioned dress—" he pulls out a daisy chain from his pocket and quickly slips it over her wrist before she can pull it away in surprise. "A perfect gentleman—" he smirks to himself, "to pick you up from your front porch. The perfect prom."

When she doesn't say anything, he continues: "But you weren't there when I drove up to your house."

"About that…" Caroline blinks down at the flowers, her cheeks tinged pink. "Funny how things change," she says honestly, and drops her head into her free hand. "Everything's going as I hoped it would. I mean, I'm still at the top of my classes. Still Student Body President. Still throwing the prom to end all proms…" She trails off, and heaves a sigh. "But why does it feel so… inconsequential? Like everything I do, no matter how much thought I put into it, isn't going to amount to anything, anyway. What will I have to show for this? A couple of pictures." She presses her lips together, turns it up into a smile that doesn't reach her eyes as she says brightly: "Pictures fade away over time."

"But we won't." Stefan raises their hands still linked tightly together, and gives it a light shaking. "We're never going to."

"I won't let us," he says.

—

Life goes on, Stefan learns. (He's surprised he'd forgotten that.)

—

"There you are," Elena says, a little worried (a lot exasperated) as she picks her way to where Caroline and Stefan are. "Bonnie's about to hold a search party for you—the DJ isn't here yet."

Caroline lifts her head from Stefan's shoulder and groans. "I called the guy five times this morning and he sounded as high as a fricken' kite." She chews on her bottom lip, her mind already whizzing past Plan B and C and even F, but it's half-hearted at best. "Okay, prom starts in an hour, I'm sure we can find someone…"

She starts, because find someone they did.

Damon's staring up at them at the foot of the bleachers, standing straight in his shiny Italian shoes, slicked-back hair, and a tuxedo so sharp and black and cutting. He looks like a character straight out of a Nolan masterpiece, save for the daisy chain-as-a-bowtie at his neck.

("Stefan got me into them," he shrugs at their stares. "I was expecting a warmer welcome but I guess your adoring gazes will have to do.")

"Damon," Elena finally gasps. "When did you get back?"

"An hour ago," he says simply. "So are you guys planning on staying up there forever or…?" By the time he's made his way to where they're all sitting, a light breeze is starting to pick up. No one shivers but Elena, in her midnight blue creation.

"You sure are a gloomy looking bunch," Damon says. "So gloomy that I might just skip this whole prom thing altogether, if you don't mind."

Caroline's about to retort, for the forty-second time, that he hadn't even been _invited_ in the first place, until he says: "I mean, I have other cooler things to do. And when I say things I mean a Model X Duesenberg, and when I say do, I mean… drive."

Caroline feels her eyes widen. "No. No way. Only one other person has the exact same car Klaus did, and that person happens to be—"

"Jay Leno?" Damon dangles a set of keys in her face. "My old buddy JayJay let me borrow it. And when I say borrow, I totally mean—"

"Shut up, Damon," Elena says, still trying to piece everything together. "You are not friends with Jay Leno."

Damon just smirks. "So what do you say?"

It's a no brainer, really.

Just as Caroline's about to grab for the keys, he pulls his hand back. "Let me tell you though, not just anyone can drive this baby. Only someone with expertise and experience should, could and so definitely would."

"Someone like me?" Stefan asks. The smile on his face drips derision, but he's enjoying this, Caroline can tell.

"Exactly!" Damon says, almost making rooster-choking gestures in his excitement that finally, _finally_ someone's catching on. "And maybe said someone could teach other people said expertise. Share the love and whatnot."

Caroline looks at Elena meaningfully. "Well, you did back your car into that fire hydrant."

"That was _one_—"

Even Stefan's starting to look gleeful now. "And our prom's theme _does_ happen to be the Roaring 20's."

"_Really_, Stefan?" Caroline asks, clapping a hand to her mouth. "And what era did you say this car was from?"

"He didn't," Damon supplies. "Well what do you know, old Duezy here was manufactured right around 1927, wasn't it?"

Elena rolls her eyes, but Damon is undeterred. "Like a sign from the Goddess Athena herself."

Elena sighs, resigned, but there's a smile on her lips and bounce to her step as she picks her way down the bleachers to the green. "Well, come on then—"

But Caroline's already beaten her to it, laughing the whole way, Stefan's hand clasped in hers. Damon flicks the keys at his brother, who catches it.

They all traipse down the field in something that looks eerily reminiscent to a Breakfast Club moment, when Bonnie appears, apparently already knowing what they're up to.

Bonnie has her arms crossed. Damon doesn't even bother with the pleasantries, just raises a hand and zips out of there;_ see ya_, followed by Caroline and Stefan, who both cast guilty looks at Elena before making like a banana and splitting.

"One," Bonnie begins coolly, "Our DJ cancelled. There's forty minutes to prom."

"Yeah, about that…"

"Two," Bonnie continues, "what the hell is so important that you're willing to skip _prom _for—"

Elena raises her arms in defence, her corsage sliding down her wrist. "Bonnie—"

"And three: Can I come with?"

Elena gapes at Bonnie, and then a moment later they're bundled up in a hug, laughing into each other's hair, the air around them smelling like flowers and sweet, heady hair-product.

"So where are we going?" Bonnie asks once they've pulled away.

I'm not sure, Elena says, probably somewhere around town.

Stefan's teaching me how to drive, Elena says.

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**put down your sword and crown  
>come lay with me on the ground<strong>

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(_fin_)

* * *

><p><strong>You don't know how long I've been dying to type out those last few words.<strong>

**I can't believe we're finally here, almost two years since I first published it. It's crazy, it's surreal, and I kind of want to cry a little bit, because this has been my _baby_, and most of you have been here since day one, and I wish I could just hug every single one of you for the endless support and enthusiasm and amazing feedback I've gotten.**

**I've never finished a story before, and yet here we are, at just over 56k words. Surreal, I tell you. This story hasn't always been the best—some of it is just plain old silliness, and sometimes, reading back, I even cringe a little. On more than one occasion I've thought of just deleting this whole thing and starting over, but then I read the reviews… and start seeing my fic (and my writing, and in retrospect, _myself_) in a different light. In a better light.**

**I'm just going to leave it up to here. Thank you for taking the time to read and (please, please, _please_ do) review this. Thank you. _Thank you. _**


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